In the hush of the Advent season, we prepare our hearts for the coming of the King. Yet long before the angels filled Bethlehem’s skies with glory, heaven had already broken into human lives with terrifying, life-altering announcements. Two of those encounters—one with Jacob, one with Mary—stand centuries apart, yet they reveal the same two postures we still bring to God today. Jacob met God on the banks of the Jabbok River (Genesis 32:22-32). A man (the Scriptures say “a man,” but Hosea later calls Him angel and God Himself) appeared in the night and wrestled Jacob until dawn. Jacob fought with every ounce of his cunning, strength, and self-reliance—the same traits that had stolen birthright and blessing, the same instincts that had kept him running for twenty years. Only when his hip was touched and he was left limping did Jacob finally cling instead of wrestle. “I will not let You go unless You bless me,” he gasped. Even in surrender he was bargaining, yet God honored the cry and renamed him Israel—“he struggles with God.” The limp would stay with him forever, a permanent reminder that the blessing comes only after we exhaust our own power.
Centuries later, another angel stepped out of eternity into a humble Galilean home. This time the greeting was not a challenge but a shattering promise: “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” Mary’s first reaction was trouble and fear—just like Jacob’s—but the similarity ends there. Where Jacob clenched his fists, Mary opened her hands. “How can this be?” she asked, not in defiance but in honest wonder. She did not demand signs, wrestle for control, or calculate how to make the impossible happen in her own strength. She simply placed the entire weight of the future on the word of God: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). One encounter left a man limping into the rest of his life, forever marked by the struggle. The other left a young woman magnifying the Lord, carrying within her the Hope of the nations.
We still meet the living God in these same two ways. Some of us wrestle. We hear the call of God—to repentance, to forgiveness, to mission, to surrender—and our instinct is to grapple. We want explanations, guarantees, and control.
We bargain: “Lord, I’ll follow if You first fix this situation, heal this wound, secure this future.” We exhaust ourselves trying to bless ourselves, only to discover that every blessing from heaven comes with a limp we didn’t choose. Others hear the same voice and respond like Mary. They do not silence their questions—Mary asked “How?”—but they lay every question at the feet of the One who is faithful. They say, in essence, “I do not understand, I cannot make this happen, and I am afraid—but I belong to You. Let it be.” Faith, for them, is not the absence of fear or doubt; it is the presence of surrender. This Christmas, the Child who displaced Jacob’s strength with a touch and filled Mary’s emptiness with divine life still comes to us. The angels’ song still sounds: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace…” Peace—not to those who wrestle the Angel to the ground in their own power, but to those with whom He is pleased, those who receive rather than resist, who open rather than clench.
So the question is not whether God will break in—He already has, in a manger, on a cross, by His Spirit. The question is how we will meet Him. Will we spend another year wrestling in our own strength, walking away blessed but broken and limping? Or will we, like Mary, dare to say today, “Let it be to me according to Your word”?
Which posture will mark your Christmas—and the year to come?
Grace & Peace,
-Pastor Scott.
Pastor's Ponderings 