Christ Jesus' instantaneous healing of people with longstanding infirmities shows the immediate efficacy of Christian healing even in chronic cases. But the Bible also shows that sometimes such cases are healed only by mighty mental wrestling, which first transforms individual thought and character.
An object lesson is found in Jacob's wrestling one night with a problem that had extended over a period of years. Having tricked his father Isaac into conferring upon him the blessing intended for his brother, Esau, Jacob fled to Haran. Years later, as he was finally returning home, he learned that Esau was approaching with a band of men. That night, the Bible says, "there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day." His mental struggle lasted until spiritual light transformed his nature, destroying the duplicity and selfishness. Thus Jacob was regenerated and renamed Israel. The divine messenger told him, "As a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed." Gen. 32:24,28. When the brothers met, they embraced.
What occurred in Jacob's thinking is indicated by dictionary definitions of "wrestle" as to come to grips in a struggle for mastery with either a material or immaterial foe, and of "wrest" as to pull away or extract by force. Such mental activity is therapeutic, as indicated by Mrs. Eddy in this statement in Science and Health referring to the healing of congenital deformity: "When wrested from human belief and based on Science or the divine Mind, to which all things are possible, that chronic case is not difficult to cure." Science and Health, p. 178. Thus we see that the rule of wrestling and wresting is as applicable to the healing of physical ills as to the character and relationship problems that confronted Jacob.
