This promise of God's help and protection spurred the rather crafty Jacob on his way to Mesopotamia where he fled to escape the wrath of his twin Esau whom he had tricked. He was to dwell with his even shiftier kinsman Laban and marry Laban's two daughters Leah and Rachel before he could stand his uncle's dishonesty no longer. Then he fled once more, this time back to Canaan where he had to face his now powerful chieftain brother Esau, who could easily have destroyed Jacob and his small retinue. Instead, Jacob found himself engaged in combat with the angel of the Lord, an amazing and obscure encounter which left him permanently crippled but with the moral stature of a patriarch. He was now indeed Israel, one who had contended with God and survived to become his champion.

I believe we all have a special part to play in the world during our brief sojourn here. While some people are obviously gifted and marked out, at least potentially, for higher things, most of us live outwardly undistinguished lives, just getting on with the business at hand. It is how we get on with our work that matters, rather than its distinction in the world's eyes. It is far better to be a good husband and father, mother and housewife, than to shine in the world of science, politics or religion yet create havoc in one's personal relationships. "In the days before the flood they ate and drank and married, until the day that Noah went into the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away" (Matt. 24.38-39). Here was a population living thoughtlessly, totally unworthy of inhabiting the earth; and so they were swept from its surface. This situation was to be repeated in a historical setting when the inhabitants of the northern kingdom of Israel (Samaria) were swallowed up by the Assyrian army, and those of Judah by the Babylonians.

Just as God made a covenant with the Israelites, so he makes one with each of us; but we have to play our part. The tragic story of the Old Testament is of the continual abrogation of that covenant on the part of the people: they separate themselves from God and the life-giving power of his Spirit. There is no life in them until they repent. But once we keep our vows of constancy, God does not leave us.

To be sure, we are poor stuff: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, as Jesus observed of Peter, James and John in the Gethsemane episode (Matt. 26.41); but we are also "such stuff as dreams are made on", as Shakespeare says in The Tempest. If we pray continually, as St Paul exhorts in 1 Thessalonians 5.16-18, we can always know an inner joy even when circumstances are bad, and we will learn quite spontaneously to give thanks whatever happens. We will begin to see, when we are in close fellowship with God in prayer, how adversity strengthens the flesh and how the dream that is the pinnacle of every life, no matter how undistinguished that life may appear in worldly eyes, may slowly attain actualization. God did not make Jacob's life easy, any more than he mollified the terrible sufferings of his chosen prophet Jeremiah. But both of them attained the full stature of a real person, and their contribution to the spiritual development of the human race has been incalculable.

So let us also, when we rub our aching bones and seek to soothe our fevered emotions after a particularly harrowing period in our lives, call with confidence on the name of God in prayer that does not falter in constancy and faith. "Be assured," says Jesus, "I am with you always, to the end of time" (Matt. 28.20).

I thank you, Lord, for your unfailing presence in my life. Make me so obedient to the high calling ahead of me that I never stray from you in the heated outburst of the passing moment.