It happens at least once a week that someone will ask me, “are you limping?” And for thirty years or more I’ve been denying it. “Just a lazy gait” I say, and it’s really what I think. But recently I’ve started to feel that arthritic pain in my left hip, that’s surely the one over the years causing folks to wonder about my funky way of walking. Could it be that I am actually limping after all?
Recently I read a blog post on Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog forum that causes me to wonder. Pastor Jeremy Berg reflects on the story of Jacob wrestling with God, and acquiring a limp (Gen 32). he says, “What is the sign that one has been touched and blessed by an encounter with the Living God? They get a big house, much wealth, and an easy, carefree life? Nope! The tell tale sign that someone has brushed up against God’s awesome presence is often this: they walk with a spiritual limp.” He goes on to reflect about a God who invites us to embrace a comfort-crushing brand of faith that leaves us winded and wounded as long-held beliefs and cultural values are at times broadsided by a sermon that reveals the radical and countercultural teachings of Jesus and His Kingdom.”
It’s quite a story we find there. Jacob’s name is changed to Israel, which means “One who struggles with God”. That’s quite a name God chooses! Chosen and beloved people shall be those who wrestle with Yahweh. And Jacob, their patron saint, lives forever forward with a limp, as if to always be a visual reminder that a life of engaged faith is vigorous, often uncomfortable and leaves scars.
Isn’t that the way life really is after all? In my case, my guess is that all the years of basketball, of pounding the pavement at Hollywood Park and Loyola Park, left me with some hip trauma that is beginning to talk to me now decades later. And it’s most certainly true that the older we get, the more we limp through life. And that metaphor might follow in terms of our faith journey with God also, even, even at God’s own bidding!
It’s almost as if God says, “I love you, you are mine, I bless you, now let’s have at it! Be honest with me. Engage the struggle of making sense of life. What is it that you want to talk about?”
In this sense, an honest and engaged journey of faith that moves with the journey of life opens up to more of the questions and struggles and mysteries as time passes. Like the Psalms. Where are you, God? Why is this or that happening? I cry out for your presence because my enemies surround me, I lament because injustice prevails. I pray but can’t overcome this addiction. Act, God! Do something!
In Jacob’s own case, he was coming to grips with his deception and thievery way back when with his brother Esau, who’s waiting for a reunion with four hundred friends on the other side of the river. In his brokenness he wrestles with God and lives to tell about it. But he leaves that encounter with a limp. A strange and wonderful blessing.
Jeremy Berg goes on to say, “I want to be a pastor who leads with a limp and I want to lead a community of people who would rather be uncomfortable in the awesome presence of God than comfortable in our own self-made world where Jesus’ meddling presence is kept safely at a distance.”
Any faith journey with the Living God is always both comforting and challenging. We are blessed, but also called always into new ways of being, doing, living. Courage and honesty are essential, and the calendar of best laid plans written in pencil as those plans may well change. To wrestle, to grapple with the Living Presence and often elusive God we know, will leave us limping but also more alive.
This early Wednesday morning my hip is more sore than normal, because I spent the night on a cot up in the prayer room supporting our family promise ministry. And it’s time, I think, to come clean. No more excuses. I think I have a slight limp. There, I said it! And I’m sure the limp will grow until the day when it’s time for a new one.
What I’m hoping too is that as my journey with faith grows old, there will be more of a limp too, leftover from close encounters with my Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.
Love From Here!
Peter Hawkinson
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