God is not nice. God is love, God is good, God is kind, but he is not nice. I mean nice in the sense of being easy-going, live-and-let-live, and inoffensive.

I just put the paska dough (Easter bread) at the back of the stove to rest after kneading it. Since the kids left home I rarely bake bread any more. This week we are awaiting a prized visit from the boys and their families, so I’m making paska, as part of our traditional Easter celebration.

As I was kneading it I remembered baking bread with my grandmother. I would become tired of mashing and rolling the little piece she gave me. I would look at the clock and ask how long we had to keep doing this. She said, “Just keep pushing it around until it pushes back.”

Kneading activates the elastic quality of the gluten.

“The bread’s muscles,” Grandma said. “If you don’t knead it the bread will be crumbly and your sandwich will fall apart and your toast won’t come out of the toaster in one piece.”

Today as I wrestled with a massive amount of dough (to make enough loaves to send home with the kids) for some reason I thought of Jacob wrestling with God’s messenger (perhaps a christophany). A “nice” god doesn’t dislocate a guy’s hip to catch his attention.

I’ve watched teens play pranks on each other when they are trying to get someone’s attention. Poking, tickling, wrestling, teasing –they’re all awkward excuses for contact (and a frequent source of embarrassing memories later in life). Now they poke each other on Facebook, often with equally blush-inducing results.

A new bride told me the story of her young husband waking her early in the morning by tickling her nose with a feather. “Who does that?” she demanded indignantly.

“Um… your lover?” I suggested.

Sometimes it takes a while to work out the language.

God tickles and pokes us too. He teases, leaves love notes and gifts and reminders that he desires our attention. I’ve discovered he has a marvelous sense of humour. Have you ever noticed that people falling in love (at least in the movies) sooner or later start playing chase and hide-and-seek? You want me? Come and get me! teehee

It’s about relationship.

When the situation becomes more serious, if we have not listened to his subtle hints, he will push us –and push hard. He will push us to the point of utter frustration until we push back. He loves us too much to be easy-going and inoffensive –particularly when he sees us speeding headlong into disaster. The irritations of life can also be messages that the Lover of our souls wants us to engage with him.

This is not a passive relationship where we accept everything circumstance fatalistically -what I thought for so long was “responding with grace” or “bearing my cross.” Faith cannot develop muscle without a little necessary roughness.

Do you want a blessing, Jacob? How badly do you want it? Enough to fight for it?

How much do we desire to know God? Enough to get mad at him, to chase him down, to beat on his chest and demand he communicate with us? Strong faith is not the possession of those who have no doubts. True faith belongs to those willing to push back, to wrestle until they have an answer.

The Master said: “These people make a big show of saying the right thing, but their hearts aren’t in it.

Because they act like they’re worshiping me but don’t mean it,

I’m going to step in and shock them awake,

astonish them,

stand them on their ears.

The wise ones who had it all figured out will be exposed as fools.

The smart people who thought they knew everything will turn out to know nothing.” Isaiah 29:13-14 The Message paraphrase.

Pursue God. Push back. He wants to be found –and he will risk offending us if necessary.