"a nameless impartation of Love..."

"oh we saw the face of angels,
for good reason this joy is in our hearts..."
- Sara Groves

In church this morning, the theme of our sermon seemed to be on the power of "blessing," and included the Bible story of Jacob wrestling with the angel at Peniel (Genesis 32). And although I'd been asked to re-post an earlier piece I'd written about this story a few days ago, this morning, something new came alive for me.

And this "something new" came from Mary Baker Eddy's brief exegesis of that account in her primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures where she posits:

"The Jacob questioned his deliverer. "Tell me, I pray thee, thy name;" bu this appellation was withheld, for the messenger was not a corporeal being, but a nameless, incorporeal impartation of divine Love to man, which to use the word of the Psalmist, restored his Soul, -- gave him the spiritual sense of being and rebuked his material sense.

"The result of jacob's struggle thus appeared. He had conquered material error with the understand of Spirit and of spiritual power."

The angel -- by refusing to claim for itself a personal identity -- had given Jacob a sense of his own oneness with Spirit, his own sense of dominion over error. Wow...

Finally it all made sense to me. In denying Jacob an answer to his query, the angel was not invoking some kind of spiritual hierarchy, a holier-than-thou, you-don't deserve-to know-my-name sort of power play, but giving Jacob the ultimate gift. A lens on his own spiritual identity. The angel wanted Jacob...now Israel...to realize that it was all, already, within himself. There was no entity or being "outside" of himself which had facilitated his awakening. The angel could not give Jacob it's name, because it didn't have one. It was truly "an incorporeal impartation of divine Love..." directly from God, to His precious son Jacob/Israel.

We all have angels, "God's thoughts passing to [us], spiritual intuitions pure and perfect, the inspirations of goodness..." wrestling with (and more accurately "within") us, not against us...all the time. We need look no further, than to the cherished hopes waiting deep within our own hearts, to find them there.

And today, I'm thinking this is the perfect "job description": "a nameless, incorporeal impartation of divine Love..."

always with Love,

Kate

Here is a link to Sara Groves' "Joy is in Our Hearts." I hope you enjoy it.