Wrestling with God

Epstein Jacob and the angel Tate Gallery

Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Jacob Wrestles With God

22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”

But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he answered.

28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

Genesis 32 NIV

Last Sunday our vicar, preached on this subject at our Sunday Service at Trinity He used it as an allegory for the way that we enter into the Kingdom of Christ. It is all by Christ's grace for us. God invites into His kingdom but there may be many struggles with Him along the way. It reminds me of a poem by Frances Thompson, rather long but the first verse gives a flavour:

The Hound of Heaven   

I fled Him down the nights and down the days

I fled Him down the arches of the years

I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears

I hid from him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot precipitated

Adown titanic glooms of chasmed fears

From those strong feet that followed, followed after

But with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat, and a Voice beat,

More instant than the feet:

All things betray thee who betrayest me.

The full poem can be found: Here

The only reason that anyone becomes a Christian is that Jesus sets His love upon them, what theologians call irresistible Grace, He then sets His bloodhound, figuratively speaking, the Holy Spirit, onto His beloved until He is captivated by Jesus. Does this mean that people do not have any part in bringing a new disciple to faith? "No way", Jesus uses His friends on earth, each one motivated in their turn by the Holy Spirit to work on an individual. 
Going back to the Golf club analogy in the last blog every time that an individual reacts with a Christian there is a small propulsion towards the Kingdom of God for that individual. It may be a prayer, a kind word, a befriending, a book lent, or an introduction to a church service or, better still an Alpha course. Each one of us is on their own Spiritual journey, which we can share with many people along the way.
In my own Spiritual journey, I had many such helps, I was brought up in a Christian household supported by the prayers of my parents and a very Godly great aunt. I was sent to Sunday school were I heard the bible read, and many of the stories I could commit to memory. However as I studied science at secondary school, I thought that the faith of my parents was simplistic and out of date, yes this was the swinging sixties.  I became convinced that the scientific principle was what would govern my life and I plunged into my medical studies at Barts hospital.
However I was far from happy in my new environment   and soon became very depressed and felt the need for something else in my life. I was very attracted to a group of students who always had coffee together and seemed to always be full of laughter and merriment, I was quickly attracted to them.
They were always very welcoming, and I noticed that they often talked about having a personal relationship with God, something I had not really come across before. I really wanted whatever this group had got, and one day one of them  took me aside and explained that all I had to do was ask Jesus into my life, say sorry for my previous rejection and rebellion and I would be what he described as, "be born again". I said a simple prayer and yes there was a change; my depression and sense of frustration went, and I had  an insatiable desire to read the new testament again. I had found a copy in my flat in a new translation. Suddenly the scriptures which I had learnt as a boy burst into light. Jesus did indeed  have hold of my life. He has never left me even though at times I have drifted away from Him. He is always pursuing and rescuing me just as Jesus told in the story of a Good Shepherd who left 99 sheep in the wilderness to go after and retrieve the one lost sheep.  

     
 

One for mouse, and one for crow, one to rot and one to grow

The little saying in my title was passed on to me by my grandfather and must be very old.
He used to say it while planting bean seeds in his garden. During this lockdown anyone with a garden or even a window box seems to be planting and sowing like mad at the moment. Perhaps it is some collective memory of the, "dig for victory", campaign during the second world war, or an instinct which is deeply ingrained in each one of us.
 The cultivation of plants was a major factor in how we developed as a civilisation. It was the means by which hunter-gathers were able to stay in one place for any length of time, without moving with the source of food. Once agriculture had developed, Towns and cities could develop and with that people could start to do other trades, rather than just spend the majority of the day looking for food.
It was thought until recently that agriculture developed 12,000 years ago, however  a site has been discovered on the shore of the Sea of Galilee where there was evidence of experiments in cultivation nearly 23,000 years ago. It started  in some hunter-gathers who were also fishermen and able to lead a more settled lifestyle. Perhaps a piece of earth had been cleared to store some grasses they had collected and someone observed that some of the seeds, which had fallen from the grasses had grown.
Soon the idea of sowing seed in an area of land, which had been cleared and cultivated developed. Someone with a bag of seed, walked slowly up and down, scattering seed in a regular way as he walked. The seed fell randomly on whatever the man or woman walked past.

Slowly agriculture developed and started to become mechanised. In 1700 Jethro Tull introduced the  horse hoe and seed drill, the manual sowing of seed broadcasting the seed over a wide area rather randomly depending on the skill of the sower was replaced by plants growing in neat rows, with much less left to chance.

Slowly the majority of people became distanced from all food production with people having very little idea of  where or how food was produced. However the desire to produce food with our own hands which we can see grow and harvest is a very satisfying occupation especially in this time of lock down when there is very little else to do.

As I mentioned earlier there was a very long history of sowing in Palestine and Jesus used the image of the sower a number of times most famously the parable of the sower. 

Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. 2 And he was teaching them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: 3 “Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. 5 Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. 6 And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. 8 And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” 9 And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Mark4:1-9 ESVUK

Jesus explains that the seed represents the word; basically the words of Jesus, now written down in the bible. The seed falls on various soils which represent the state of different people's hearts and how well the word in received.   So this is suggesting that our character and way of life is influential in whether or not we become a Christian, so if salvation is the sovereign will  of God then basically how we respond to the message must be shaped by Him. So not just in the moment of salvation but in a steady influence throughout our lives. However Jesus gives us the privilege of sowing the seed. 

This weekend I have been on our church weekend for our Trinity Lewes men's group, not originally as planned at Bowles.conference centre , but virtually online. Our main speaker talked about sowing seeds how we get to scatter the seed sometimes in  small ways but slowly and after a long time there may well be a harvest. Another image he used was of a game of golf. Each person is a golf club in the hands of Jesus every time we meet somebody as the golf club hits a ball we are bringing the ball nearer to the "hole" of trusting in Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. We are all different as are the golf clubs and each club is used in a different part of the field. No matter what our individual contribution we can all play our small part in the plans of the Saviour if we are prepared to put ourselves totally into His hands.
So happy sowing everybody and may we all reap a bountiful harvest.