Nobody warned me about the anger.
I expected the questions. I expected the grief. I didn’t expect to be standing in my kitchen, furious. Furious at the church for what it taught me. Furious at the people who used God to control me. And, if I’m honest, furious at myself for believing it so long, and for the ways I passed it on.
If I’m honest, I’m still angry at the ways I was taught that women were only as good as the husbands they married and still a bit mad at my deceased parents for trying to match me up with older men instead of helping me carve out a sustainable path for my life.
If you’re questioning the faith you were handed, you may know this anger. And you may have been taught that it’s the most dangerous thing you could feel. Anger at the church is rebellion. Anger at God is sin. Good Christians forgive and move on.
So what do you do with it? This week’s story says: anger isn’t wrong. Bring it to God. Grab hold, and don’t let go.
Why Jacob?
Hebrews 11 remembers Jacob at the very end of his life:
“By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, ‘bowing in worship over the top of his staff.’”* (Hebrews 11:21)
An old man, worshiping, leaning on a staff. Why the staff? Because decades earlier, Jacob spent a whole night wrestling God, and he walked away limping. He may have leaned on his staff because he limped for the rest of his life.
Hebrews puts Jacob in the Faith Hall of Fame with his wound still showing. His faith wasn’t the absence of a fight. It was a fight he never walked away from.
The backstory
Jacob is in trouble. Years earlier he cheated his twin brother, Esau, out of his birthright and his father’s blessing, and then he fled. Now he’s finally heading home, and he hears Esau is coming to meet him with four hundred men. Genesis says Jacob “was greatly afraid and distressed”* (32:7).
His conflict-resolution strategy up to this point has been running away and sending gifts. (Relatable.)
The night before he has to face his brother, Jacob sends everyone across the river Jabbok and stays behind. “Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak”* (32:24).
Who is this man? The text keeps it mysterious. By morning, Jacob is convinced he’s “seen God face to face” (32:30). The prophet Hosea calls him an angel (Hosea 12:4). Either way, Jacob has spent the night grappling with the divine.
When the man can’t win, he strikes Jacob’s hip and wrenches it out of joint. And Jacob, hurting, exhausted, clinging on, says one of the boldest lines in the Bible:
“I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”* (Genesis 32:26)
Anger that holds on
Here’s what I want you to see. Jacob doesn’t walk away from God. He doesn’t pray a polite prayer, either. He fights. And he holds on while he fights.
That’s what honest anger can be in a life of faith: not leaving God, but refusing to let go of God until something real happens.
And notice what God does not do. God doesn’t strike Jacob down for fighting. God doesn’t lecture him about his attitude. God stays in the wrestling match all night long. And at daybreak, God blesses him.
If you’re angry at the church, at what was done to you in God’s name, even at God, you can bring that anger to God. God can take it. God has taken it before.
“What is your name?”
Before the blessing comes, the man asks a strange question: “What is your name?”
And Jacob has to say it: “Jacob.”
That name wasn’t neutral. It comes from the Hebrew word for “heel.” Jacob was born grabbing his twin’s heel (Genesis 25:26), and the name came to mean something like grabber, one who supplants. When Jacob stole Esau’s blessing, Esau said bitterly, “Is he not rightly named Jacob?” (27:36).
So when God asks his name, Jacob has to say out loud who he’s been: the one who grabbed, schemed, and hurt the people closest to him.
Some of our anger lives right here. Anger at ourselves. How did I believe this? Who did I hurt with it? Who did I judge, exclude, or scare with the faith I was handed?
God doesn’t ask Jacob’s name to shame him. God asks so Jacob can be renamed.
A new name, and a limp
“You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”* (Genesis 32:28)
Israel. The text itself explains the name: one who has striven, wrestled, struggled, with God. Sit with that. The people of God are named after a man who wrestled God and wouldn’t let go. The struggle isn’t a detour from faith. It’s written into the family name.
And Jacob walks into the sunrise limping (32:31). You don’t come out of this kind of night unmarked. The limp isn’t a sign you did it wrong. It’s the mark of a real encounter.
An honest complication
Isn’t anger a sin? Many of us were taught so. But Scripture says, “Be angry but do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26). The anger itself isn’t the sin. What we do with it can be: contempt, cruelty, revenge.
Anger is often information. It tells you something that mattered was violated. God gets angry at injustice all through the prophets. Jesus turned over tables in the temple. The psalms are full of people saying furious things to God’s face.
And anger at yourself needs a guardrail. There’s a difference between I did harm and I am bad.
The first is honest and can lead to repair. The second is shame, and shame isn’t where God leaves Jacob. God asks his name so he can change it.
Did God hurt Jacob to teach him a lesson?
This part of the story is confusing, and I don’t want to rush past it. The man strikes Jacob’s hip, and Jacob walks away limping. So is that what God does — wounds us for our own good?
Look at what the text does and doesn’t say. It never calls the injury a punishment. There’s no rebuke, no “because you.” And the blessing comes right after it, not instead of it. The limp is what the wrestling left behind, the mark of a real encounter. It isn’t a lesson God inflicted.
Genesis even treats it as something to honor: Israel remembered that night at the dinner table for generations (32:32).
And hear me on this: God does not harm you to teach you something. If people hurt you in God’s name, that wasn’t God’s discipline, and it isn’t your “holy limp.” That was harm, and God grieves it with you. The promise of this story isn’t that God wounds us. It’s that when we wrestle honestly, God stays, and God blesses the one who limps away.
So what do we do with this
Say it to God, not just about God. Tell God you’re angry. Out loud, on paper, in the car. That isn’t walking away. That’s grabbing hold.
Name your part, then let God rename you. If you hurt people with the old faith, say so honestly. Then listen for the new name. It won’t be “failure.”
Let the limp be holy. You don’t have to hide that this has marked you. Jacob worshiped leaning on his staff for the rest of his life.
God who wrestles with us,
here is my anger. I’m not letting go of you.
Please don’t let go of me. Amen.
*Scripture quotations are from the NRSVue.
The Greenhouse Preview
This Friday in the Greenhouse: what to do with anger when it has nowhere to go, including a practice that lets your body move it and a lament prayer to say straight to God.
The Closing Question
Tell me in the comments: What are you angry about in your faith journey? You’re allowed to say it here.
P.S. This Sunday on Streams of Grace: what if the fight is the faith? Come breathe with me. Sign up here!
I am angry that so many people are certain of God and certain that he speaks to them, and I am quite the opposite.
I hesitate to say this, but I’m angry that God doesn’t speak to me.