8 Then Rachel said, “I have had a great struggle with my sister, and I have won.” So she named him Naphtali.
Some struggles are god-sized struggles. This was one of them for Rachel. She is the wife that Jacob loves, and yet she is unable to have children. And in their culture, children were everything. The two wives have been in a child-bearing contest with each other. Leah, Rachel’s sister, desperately wants to be loved. Rachel desperately wants children. Needless to say, things have gotten way out of hand. Even the female servants have been forced into the game. What a mess! Rachel says she has been in a great struggle. The Hebrew is hard to put into English. It says something like “the struggle of God I have struggled and won.” This has been the greatest challenge she can imagine. It has consumed her life. Everything she has and is has been thrown into this struggle. Her heart and soul were at stake, and she now feels like she can see the light again. She is able to breathe freely. All of us face struggles in life. All of us get overwhelmed at some point. We all face “the struggle of God.” Today we might phrase it, “I was drowning in my struggle” or something similar. I could barely keep my head above water. I felt like my life was over. I felt all alone. I saw no way out. The funny thing that happens later in Rachel’s life is that she has sons of her own. She stops being infertile. If she had just been patient, things would not have gotten nearly as messy. Of course God used the messy for His purposes. These sons who are being born are the twelve tribes of Israel. So God even uses our messes for His glory. Rachel hit rock bottom and now she feels lifted and satisfied. The lesson I get from this is that we all hit rock bottom at some point in our lives. For some of us these bottoms last for years. It can seem that we will never be able to breathe freely again. Our lives seem so dark and lonely that we have difficulty lifting our heads. We might feel like we are in a god-sized struggle. The good news is that we have a God who is able to carry us through the struggle and lift us up. He is not absent when we are struggling. He is right there with us, struggling right alongside us. Reach out today. In the middle of your struggle recognize that Jesus is right there with you in the struggle.
The Arnold Journey 