Limping Into 2025

If you’re limping into 2025, maybe God’s got you right where he wants you.

The kids wondered about the stuff on the teacher’s desk. In the middle was a large, empty jar. On the left a few large rocks, and on the right, another jar, filled with sand.

You might be able guess the rest because you’ve seen the illustration—or used it yourself.

“You see, kids, if you pour the sand into the jar first—” said the teacher, tipping the jar of sand so that grains cascaded from one jar to the other.

“—then the big rocks won’t fit.” The teacher stacked one rock on the top of the sand so that it peaked above the rim of the jar.

“But, if you put the big rocks in first, the sand will fill in around them.”

Moving the rocks into the empty jar, the teacher then poured the sand in around it. Everything fit, easily.

We must put the big priorities of our lives into place before the little stuff, or the little stuff will crowd out the important things.

We need to get the big rocks into the jar before the details of 2025 crowd them out.

I can’t tell you what the specifics of 2025 will be for you, or the specifics of God’s will for you in 2025. But I can confidently tell you what big pieces you should prioritize. The biggest Rock of all is the “higher rock” (Ps. 62:1).

God.

And if you want to truly meet God, you must be where God is.

My first date with Laura was at the Starbucks where Bardstown Road turns into Baxter Avenue in Louisville, Kentucky. I had to meet her at the right place, or our relationship would never have developed into anything.

We will never worship God wholeheartedly if we don’t meet him where he is.

In a big picture sense, we meet God at the foot of the cross. We meet God in Jesus. Jesus is the “place” where we find God.

In the regular rhythm of our lives, we also meet God at the cross. We meet God in the places of strain and struggle, challenge and conviction, the valleys of shadow.

We follow the path of Father Jacob, son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham.

Like us, Jacob was at an inflection point in life. Between a rock and hard place. He’d cheated his brother Esau out of the family inheritance. Esau vowed to kill him, so Jacob ran away. Got married (times two). Had a bunch of kids.

Now, he was going to back, and Esau was on the way. Jacob could only assume that Esau had bad intentions.

Moses wrote the story down for us. Jacob prepared to meet Esau, separating his people and possessions into groups to appease the brother he’d deceived so many years before (Gen. 32:1-23).

The Surprising Struggle with God

With Jacob alone and vulnerable, the story surprises us with the turn it takes. “Jacob was left alone” —yes, makes sense—“and a man wrestled with him until daybreak” (Gen. 32:24). We pause— “Wait, what’s going on?” (Like I often ask during a Great American Family Christmas movie after I’ve been scrolling on my phone instead of paying attention…)

The Wrestler enters the story unexpectedly, without announcement or context.

So too with us. In the wilderness of our vulnerability, God shows up and wrestles with us. The narrative calls this Wrestler a man, but it becomes clear it’s God in human form (a theophany), probably a preincarnate appearance of Christ (a Christophany). As Hosea reflects on it many years later, Jacob “wrestled with God” (Hos. 12:3).

John Calvin has some strong words for this text:

All the servants of God in this world [are] wrestlers, because the Lord exercises them with various kinds of conflicts…our business is truly with him…For as all prosperity flows from his goodness, so adversity is either the rod with which he corrects our sins, or the test of our faith and patience.

That’s a lot of theological mindfuel, which I think C.S. Lewis summarized even more poignantly when Mr. Beaver famously described Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: “Of course he isn’t safe, but he’s good."

This is a strange wrestling match. On the one hand, this Wrestler cannot defeat Jacob. But the Wrestler clearly and willingly takes this limitation onto Himself. He adjusts his strength to Jacob’s.

We know the overpowering strength of the Wrestler in his ability to put Jacob’s hip out of socket. “When the man saw that he could not defeat him, he struck Jacob’s hip socket as they wrestled and dislocated his hip” (Gen. 32:25). He cannot prevail against Jacob, but he can put Jacob’s hip out of joint with a single touch, “a devastating blow” resulting in an injury that lasts well beyond the match.

A human “touch” could not dislocate a hip in a healthy adult male. Reliable Internet sources explain that car accidents and falls from high off a ladder generate the force needed for a hip dislocation. A human “touch” could not dislocate a hip in a healthy adult male. So Jacob’s mysterious wrestling partner is Captain America strong, even though he does not prevail against Jacob.

But Jacob is determined. But more than determined. He is desperate. A hip dislocation wouldn’t just be excruciatingly painful. It would disable the entire leg. Picture Jacob like a football player lying on the turf needing a backboard and ambulance. Yet he holds the Wrestler, and won’t let go.

The Wrestler commands him: “‘Let me go, for it is daybreak.’

But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me’” (Gen. 32:26).

Again, the power of this Wrestler indicates that he is willingly allowing himself to be held by Jacob. Clearly, the point is not the Wrestler’s inability to escape, but Jacob learning to hold fast.

Jacob would not ask for a blessing from some dude who couldn’t beat him in a fight. Jacob understands that this is not a man, but One who is able to grant a blessing. The entire fiasco with Esau centered on this word: “bless.” Jacob pretended to be Esau, tricking his dad into blessing him (Gen. 27).

But Jacob needed another Blessing. He needed the Blessing of Yahweh, the Lord. The Lord had promised that he would bless the nations through Jacob: “All the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you and your offspring” (Gen. 28:14).

Yet here we see Jacob recognizing the existential, life-and-death need for the Lord to grant his blessing to Jacob.

And the Lord was about to do “above and beyond” (Eph. 3:21) Jacob’s most desperate hopes.

The Blessedness of Limping

It starts out strangely: “‘What is your name?’ the man asked.

‘Jacob,’ he replied” (Gen. 32:27).

The Wrestler asked Jacob’s name, not because he didn’t know it, but because Jacob did know it. Jacob had been labeled with this identity since he grabbed Esau’s heel straight out of the womb: Jacob “came out grasping Esau’s heel with his hand. So he was named He Grabs the Heel” (Gen. 25:12). “Heel-grabbing” was an expression that can mean “cheating.” Jacob had always been “heel-grabber.” Cheater.

When the Wrestler drew Jacob’s attention to Jacob’s identity, Jacob confessed his name like a sin. “Heel-grabber.” “Cheater.” “Liar.”

We all have names we’ve lived with for a long time. Sometimes others label us. Sometimes we label ourselves. All too often, our behavior validates these labels.

“Liar.”

“Failure.”

“Drunk.”

“Gambler.”

“Addict.”

“Idolater.”

“Cheater.”

“Mediocre.”

“Lazy.”

“Greedy.”

“Selfish.”

“What is your name?”

God asks us in the lonely place where we have to deal with him, and him alone. The worst things we do aren’t anomalies of an otherwise good person. Those things are who we are. Jacob was honest, and we can be honest, too. Because God is There.

Jacob was “Cheater.”

But God.

God gave Jacob a new name: “‘Your name will no longer be Jacob,’ he said. ‘It will be Israel because you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed’” (Gen. 32:28).

Here, for the first time of many, many times, the name “Israel” shows up in the Bible, as the ESV Study Bible points out. Israel means, “He struggles with God.” God redefined Jacob’s entire identity, and the identity of his family. For ever after, Israel is the name of God’s people. From that moment Jacob was renamed, and his destiny and his family’s destiny were redirected.

God had the authority to rename Jacob, and has the authority to rename us. But Jacob didn’t have the authority to name God.

“Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’

But he answered, ‘Why do you ask my name?’ And he blessed him there” (Gen. 32:29).

God dismissed Jacob’s request. He received from God what God desired to give. God told his name in his own good timing. He revealed it to Moses: “I Am Yahweh: merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, who will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex. 3:14, 35:5-7). He revealed it in the gospel: “the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt. 28:19).

Limping Into Purpose

Jacob couldn’t name God, but he could name places in God’s world and moments in God’s story. He didn’t have authority over God, but he did have authority under God. “Jacob then named the place Peniel, ‘For I have seen God face to face,’ he said, ‘yet my life has been spared’” (Gen. 32:30).

We have authority, too. We have authority in Christ to do and to claim and to name all that Christ has authorized us to do and to claim and to name. Nothing more—and nothing less.

We have purpose and a calling. And we limp into it, as Jacob did. “The sun shone on him as he passed by Penuel—limping because of his hip. That is why, still today, the Israelites don’t eat the thigh muscle that is at the hip socket: because he struck Jacob’s hip socket at the thigh muscle” (Gen. 32:31-32).

We walk with Jesus with a stagger rather than a swagger. And we consecrate the limp. The struggles are holy unto God. The cross is the primary sacred symbol of our faith, after all.

So, if you’re limping into 2025, maybe, just maybe, God’s got you right where he wants you.

Limping humbles the high-minded. It reminds you that you aren’t as great as you think. “Slow down, Turbo,” as we said a generation ago.

Limping lifts the low-down. It reminds you that you aren’t as bad off as you assume. You’re not stuck or helpless or hopeless. You can move toward God’s calling.

Limping calls the complacent. You have a God to wrestle with and a destiny to embrace with humble confidence.

So here’s to limping into 2025.