Alone

Jacob was left alone . . . 

 - From Genesis 32

The most transformative events in history, that lead to the betterment of humanity, seem to happen when someone is alone; or at least, with just a few others.

When watching the nightly news, during the first part of the year, 2020, you see mobs of angry people doing what angry mobs of people do: commit random acts of violence, operate according to groupthink, moving about with the purpose of a beehave.

And yet, when a person wants to find wisdom, s/he always goes off into solitude, to a secluded place. To get to the truth, you have to get away from the crowds.

On the night when the nation of Israel was, arguably, born, Jacob sends his entire family, including his eleven sons, off ahead of him, across the river. He stays behind. He did not even keep any supplies. He wanted to be alone.

I would guess he wanted to pray. He needed time alone with God. He must have been deeply troubled, for he ended up wrestling with a strange representative of God, most of the night. The messenger had super powers, for it says that all he had to do was touch Jacob's hip, to break it.

Jacob prayed, and had an encounter with God.

Likewise, many centuries later, the Church was born. Jesus finished the Last Supper, and left His friends and followers as they slept, including the eleven faithful Apostles. He went off alone to Gethsemane. He took nothing with  Him. He wanted to be alone.

He wanted to pray, and to spend time alone with His Father. He was deeply troubled, for the prayer time was more like a struggle with God. Blood poured forth as sweat, in a look ahead to events of the next day. He prayed for super strength to last the next twenty-four hours.

Jesus prayed, and had an encounter with His Father.

As you watch invents unfold throughout the world . . . pray for the people in the mobs. Ask God to speak to each one of them. Maybe God will lead a critical mass of them away . . . where they too can pray and find wisdom . . . struggle with God and with themselves . . . and be forever changed.