I’ve wanted to re-post the below poem since last week. I would have posted it along with a video of my kids wrestling with each other. But then, I posted something else instead and carried on with life and lived life to the fullest because as John Blase has written, God loves life and this world and all of us and wants us to live life to the fullest. And so, I took an older friend and my youngest son to the Yellow River Wildlife Sanctuary (a great place to visit if you’re ever passing through the Atlanta area, by the way) on Thursday. While we were there, my son was brushing a goat and the below happened:

Anywho, I thought maybe, since I was thinking about this idea of wrestling with God again, and how each one of us has to wrestle with God for ourselves at some point in our lives (hopefully sooner than later) that I’d actually post this poem this week. And that I’d do it with the above video-clip of my son, and that I’d remind us that if we’re wrestling with God or need to wrestle with God, (kind of like how this goat wrestled with my son), ’cause we’re just not so sure about Him, that at the end of the day if we buck God off of us, He’ll still be smiling and waiting to try again with us.

Everyday Wrestler

I voice the Christian cliché as if I know it.
I express these truths because I heard them from
Abraham and Isaac, but I never
wrestled with God myself.

And that’s why these things can come
from my mouth and yet I am still a deceiver, still
unorganized, still burning in my loins for
another one’s spouse, still agitated to shouting
when all of life’s insecurities come my way.

It’s because I’ve never met God for myself and
I don’t know His reality – His substance.
Or, maybe I have met Him and do know His reality,
but it’s just that I don’t meet Him for myself on
an everyday – every moment – basis.

They say that you can be a Christian and not need
to have some dramatic story of ashes to beauty.
And yeah, that’s true, but I can’t be a Christian without
a decisive encounter. And there’s no way I can
really meet God and it not shake my soul.

There’s no way I can meet Him and not be different
in some way. They say you can be a Christian and
go back to the vomit you left behind.

But I say, no way. I will wrestle God myself.