Jacob wrestles with the adversary
Well, don't we, too? Wrestle with the foe, I mean?
At first we think we have real opposition,
Coming at us from another camp,
Making onslaughts on our life—
An enemy outside our consciousness.
And so it must have seemed to Jacob.
Jacob lets go of the adversary
Jacob wrestles until faith's first reward is his:
Love—as a tender mother would—shows him the foe's unreality.
Truth—with the strength of fatherhood—smites the muscle
out of fleshly ego,
Lets Jacob see its flabby pretenses to manhood.
And Jacob, still armed with faith and not afraid, lets go (of error)
And carries on the fight.
Jacob hangs on to the light
And mustn't we? Be persistent in the truth, I mean,
Since dawn is not the whole of day?
It's tempting, oh so tempting, to accept the daybreak as the noon.
Truth seems so bright in early morn—especially after night.
Yet dawn is but the sparkle of God's allness, of man's whole
and sinless being,
That this stronger-faith-than-ever (understood and still persisting)
will reveal the noon of
Will dig deep the roots of.
