URC Daily Devotions 28 August 2025

You have no name.
We have wrestled with you all
day, and now night approaches,
the darkness from which we emerged
seeking; and anonymous
you withdraw, leaving us nursing
our bruises, our dislocations.

For the failure of language
there is no redress. The physicists
tell us your size, the chemists
the ingredients of your
thinking. But who you are
does not appear, nor why
on the innocent marches
of vocabulary you should choose
to engage us, belabouring us
with your silence. We die, we die
with the knowledge that your resistance
is endless at the frontier of the great poem.

R S Thomas © Elodie Thomas

Genesis 32: 24-29

Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 

Reflection

RS Thomas himself once said “One of the most important functions of poetry is to embody religious truth”. So what truth is this poem trying to convey?

There is a clear reference to Jacob wrestling all night with God’s messenger. Jacob does not get what he wants – he doesn’t defeat the stranger, nor does he learn his name – but in the wrestling he is both damaged and blessed.

RS Thomas is, as always, painfully honest about our wrestling with language for God and concepts of God, and compares religious and scientific wrestling with the mysteries of our world. Yet all forms of trying to understand are ultimately defeated – God is beyond our full comprehension in this world, he will cause us to continue to wrestle with understanding and to wonder, until our dying breath.

Many scientists who are also Christians find purpose for their struggle to understand more about God and God’s world in that one word ‘wonder’. Science and faith can be united in their awe of God and God’s creation. Yet the glorious thing about both science and faith is that despite all their wrestling they will never fully grasp God. There is always more to understand and explore until eventually, like Jacob, we are blessed, changed and made new. In the wonder of heaven perhaps we will learn to stop wrestling and finally just enjoy being in the presence of pure, awesome love.

In the meantime, we can be honest about the things with which we struggle, knowing that God will never let us go. And perhaps we can practice being awe-struck by the wonders of God – in poetry and art, in words and music, and in science and thought.

One day, as Charles Wesley describes it, we will be ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’ ( the hymn ‘Love divine, all loves excelling’).

Prayer

God who is beyond all our words,
we praise you for your wonders.
We thank you that in Jesus you show us love
that looks like us.
When we struggle in life
send us your Spirit,
to give us wisdom to keep our eyes set on you,
until we see you face to face.
Amen.