When Dawn Breaks on a Broken Man and Leaves a Sacred Scar

The Story of Jacob and the Promise of Israel

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Adapted from the story of Jacob in Genesis 32:22-32

My eyes opened slowly as the fog of a sleepless night obstructed my awareness of what had happened just a couple of hours before.

I squinted at the mid-morning sun glaring at me from well above the horizon. It told me that I had stolen away just a couple of hours of sleep while waiting for my brother to appear on the horizon with his army of 400 mighty men.

First, I tried to move my head. My neck was stiff. The pain shot down my spine. I pulled my foot back, trying to get some part of my body to move. I tried to bend my knee, but it was my hip that refused to budge. It would take me another quarter-hour to work out the pain enough to arise from the hard desert floor that I had collapsed upon shortly after the rising sun.

Broken.
Weak.

Yet restored!

I couldn't recall the details, but I could faintly remember enough to know that what I had seen, who I had struggled with the night before, was not a natural man. And that the fight had supernaturally changed me. It had not just changed my mind, my perspective, or my self-confidence—it had changed my identity.

"Israel," he said.

Israel?

"You have prevailed!"

I had been known as Jacob since my birth. Why Israel?

I was drowning in the fear of what my brother, Esau, would do when we met on the hillside that separated us that hot, sticky morning. I had cheated him out of almost everything that gives a man honor. Even in our mother's womb, I was fighting to take what belonged to him.

It wasn't always that I wanted to deceive and connive to make what was his, mine. Often, it was my passivity as our mother lobbied for power. Her desire, her desperation, her manipulation—it permeated into my behavior after so many years. To please her, I had lived lies and crafted plans to get what made us both feel in control.

That pattern snaked its way into my thoughts and followed me to this dry desert. Just the previous day I faced my wives' father, the one I deceived in order to escape his land with his riches in my possession. It was not an eye for an eye, but 10,000 head of cattle and my family for the wages of my years of labor.

Even Laban embodied this family curse. I was his target long before he became mine. Deception was the necessary evil for the property I deserved—no, that I earned. So once again, I had to devise a plan of deception.

And there I stood, one sunset past, facing the folly of my youth to the East and the regret of my manhood to the West. Pinned in and alone.

That morning, I looked back at the land I had worked for 14 years to earn that family and the livestock I traveled with. I stood there as a new and changed man. And I looked forward to a moment where I would look my brother in the eye. I could only hope he would know that things were different now.

My eyes lifted from my morning meal to the horizon underneath the rising sun. I saw the slow-moving silhouette of an army. Whether it would be a friendly army or a foe, I did not know. That rested upon my brother's reconciliation of our broken past.

My heart began to feel like it would beat out of my chest. I knew what I had to do. I couldn't allow my entire family to die in that dust and heat. I divided them into three groups and put a fair distance between them—the servant girls first with their children, then Leah. Rachel and I would take up the rear. That way, if the army attacked, there would be enough time for the family to try to escape.

I started walking toward my brother, one foot in front of the other. Slow at first, and then faster by the step. I had to get past the family and make my way first to Esau. Sweat burned in my eyes. My legs began to weaken. I ran faster. A stone's throw away, I collapsed to the ground and bowed down seven times, begging Esau's forgiveness.

It was my last effort to save myself and my entire household. I looked up again and saw Esau lunge forward into a sprint. I slowly closed my eyes, expecting a blow to the head or an arrow to the heart. There was no need to fight back. I had taken his honor, his blessing, and his inheritance. I received my reward. It was time to pay the price.

My mind was foggy as I listened to his feet hit the ground as he ran at me full speed. His voice. It sounded like laughter, but not laughter of vengeance. I closed my eyes more tightly as I heard him drawing close. I felt his body blow against mine. I fell to the ground and felt his arms wrap tightly around my back. His thick beard rubbed against my neck, and he cried tears that I now know to be tears of joy. Ridiculous, hilarious joy!

Somewhere from deep within me, laughter began to rise. We stood to our feet and embraced one another, shouting for joy that what was lost is found. We reveled in the grace of forgiveness. My tears fell like drops of rain in the desert. The fear faded away like billowing smoke.

Freedom.

He began to ask about my family. I once again felt the sharp pain in my hip as I tried to walk to introduce the servant girls. I still carry that limp, and I am thankful. It is a reminder that we don't always get what we deserve—and that's the best news of all.

I don't know how to explain it, but I'm quite certain that night in the desert I wrestled more with myself than with God. They say it's in the deepest pit that we come face to face with our inability to find our way. That's when we realize that to regain any sense of life, we have to die. Die to self-sufficiency. Die to the idol of self-reliance. I had nothing left to turn to except to stubbornly stake my claim to His blessing.

Desperate men are determined to hang on or die.

The greatest wounds are the wounds of love. I hope I limp forever as a reminder of the night I wrestled with God and was redeemed.

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