When He Hides His Face, Part Iii

God showed His face a few more times--like when He and Jacob wrestled, God knows why, but wrestle they did, all day and into the night, and here's the thing: God couldn't beat him! Jacob held God so tight the Almighty just couldn't seem to break free (seem might be the keyword here) and so He asked the mortal what he wanted to let Him -- God!--go... well, you or I might ask for tons of gold and lots of fancy stuff, or to be forever young, immortal and attractive and rich and healthy-- did I miss anything? But no, square old Jacob just asks God to bless him! That's it, just a blessing, like when you say 'God bless you' (do people still say that anymore?) And then he tells God he ain't gonna let Him loose till he gets it, not until God blesses him.... And God must have been impressed. After all, God knows human nature cause He made it, with all its contradictions, with all its beauty and all its ugly flaws, giving it great power to create or destroy, do good or wreck evil, to seek love and the heights of heaven or wallow in hate, sinking soul to hell.... Of all the creatures, He freed only one from the tyranny of instinct, giving choice and hope and despair to only one species-- all other animals, all the fish and all the birds, all the predators and all their prey He protected from ever having to ask...Why? And long after He hid His face, He would know that some of those blessed (cursed?) creatures who felt compelled to question Him would in a sort of deep blindness conclude they are the way they are because nature and chance somehow linked to make them-- flukes really, the flukes of the Universe: always asking but not listening, seeing but blind, powerful but so weak. Perhaps Jacob sensed all this, wise man that he was, asking only to be blessed and not asking for the whole world, knowing as only few ever do what really matters-- Eternity!