One of my good friends is a young 91-year-old. One of the things she loves to do is watch professional wrestling. She seldom misses those "blood and guts" matches on television every Saturday.

One Saturday I stopped by to see her at wrestling time, so I took a ringside seat and we watched a match or two together. It didn't take me long to see that I was sitting beside a serious wrestling fan. I didn't dare breathe a word that I thought it possibly could be theatrics! If she could have gotten to them she would have used her cane on the tag-team beating up her favorite boys!

Today we have ringside seats for another wrestling match. As a matter of fact, through the eyes of the Genesis writer we're going to see the most unusual wrestling match in history. And before it's all over we just might discover the blessing of wrestling!

Our main event takes place in an open-air arena beside the Jabbok river. It's a rather odd place for a wrestling match, but this is no ordinary event. In one corner of the ring stands "Big Jake," better known to us as Jacob, the master of deception. And in the other corner, of all the people we would expect to see, is God himself. It's quite a billing! Jacob versus God!

But at a closer, more serious look, we see that Jacob is wrestling with God because he's wrestling with life. It wasn't by accident that Jacob ended up in a wrestling match with God. Everything that had happened, everything that was happening in his life, had been leading to this one crucial encounter.

We're not merely spectators; we, too, are in the ring. Like Jacob, we're wrestling with our problems, our decisions, our doubts, our fears. It could be that we're engaged in a struggle with God. At some time or another we all wrestle with life and along the way we usually wrestle with God.

One of the things that Jacob was wrestling with was family problems. For many years he hadn't spoken to or even seen his brother Esau. Ever since Jacob had tricked his brother out of his inheritance, family relations had been strained, to say the least. In fact, if Jacob hadn't left the country Esau probably would have killed him. But now, after all those bitter years, Jacob was wrestling with the idea of reconciliation.

It's not unusual for us to wrestle with family problems is it? Strained and broken relationships between husbands and wives, children and parents, brothers and sisters aren't uncommon. No doubt some of us are struggling with an unhappy marriage. We're trying to decide whether to "hang on" or "hang it up" or get some help with our problems. The stresses our society places on marriages makes us all struggle from time to time.

Our family problems often coincide with our financial problems. When there are too many bills and not enough money, when the cookie jar stays empty too long, trouble frequently starts "cooking" in the family. Everything from children to a lack of communication to a mid-life crisis can cause our marriages problems.

Or perhaps our family problem is that we don't have a family. It could be that we're wrestling with what it means to be single in a world that seems geared to couples. Fitting in and finding one's place as a single adult is usually more of a struggle than an adventure.