Wrestling and Walking: Notes from the Trail
“So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak... Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” … And Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.””
As I mentioned in my recent letter, I’m preparing for an upcoming sabbatical—specifically by walking the Peak Wesley Way. And yes, the rumors are true: I’ve been in training. (If you missed the letter, it’s available here.)
You might see me walking laps around the church with my backpack on, looking like Joshua circling Jericho. Friends have started inviting me on their favorite local trails, and I suspect some are just trying to figure out if I’ll actually do this whole 47-mile pilgrimage thing. Spoiler: I will.
Most mornings I begin my walk in prayer, scripture reading, and reflection. Once I’ve had some time with the Lord, I usually switch over to music. Now, people have described my music taste in a variety of ways—“eclectic” is the charitable version. “Weird” might be more accurate. Case in point: one of my go-to walking soundtracks is Charles Wesley hymns.
The other day, a hymn stopped me in my tracks—“Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown.”
Originally published as a poem titled Wrestling Jacob in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1742), this piece captured the imagination of Charles Wesley’s contemporaries—so much so that Isaac Watts (the guy who wrote When I Survey the Wondrous Cross) said it was worth all the hymns he’d ever written.
The hymn is a meditation on the story we just read—Jacob wrestling through the night with an unnamed stranger. Jacob refuses to let go until he learns the stranger’s name. Wesley sees this as a metaphor for the spiritual life: we wrestle, we persist, we seek to know God—not just in abstract terms, but personally and intimately. And when the name is finally revealed, it is this: Love (1 John 4:8, 16).
The hymn builds verse after verse around this declaration:
“Thy nature and Thy name is Love.”
The tune I like best for this hymn is called “Vernon,” written by Lucius Chapin—a fifer in the Continental Army who endured the winter at Valley Forge alongside George Washington. After the war, Chapin became a singing teacher and wrote music in the Appalachian frontier. Eventually, he moved to Vernon, Kentucky near the Cumberland River where he wrote the eponymous (one of my favorite words!) tune. If you would like to listen to it, you can find it here.
The music sounds like its geography: rooted, soulful, and with a rhythm that makes you want to stomp your feet—or walk. My family is from the Tennessee side of the Cumberland Plateau, so I feel something ancestral in it, too.
And so I walk.
Sometimes I walk with Jesus.
Other times, if I’m honest, I wrestle with him.
But whether walking or wrestling, I keep circling back to the same truth:
His name and His nature is Love.
Watch for more reflections from my sabbatical journey.