In the depth of fear and distress, Jacob, in our lesson from the Hebrew scriptures, experienced the presence of God in a palpable way. Struggling all night with the unknown that awaited him, Jacob found peace with the dawn of the new day and recognized that, going forth, God was blessing him with new life. Jacob had known God’s presence in his angelic ladder dream as he was escaping from his brother Esau (Gen.28:10-19) and named the place Beth-El, “the House of God” in Hebrew. Now as he was retuning to face Esau in his homeland, he honored the place of his encounter with the Holy One by naming it Peniel, which means “the face of God.” The presence of Divine Love was so intense, so intimate, it felt to Jacob as if he were seeing God face to face. Throughout scripture, we find our spiritual forebears describing their encounters with the sacred with such sensory terms as a voice, a touch, a fragrance, a vision. Having an epiphany, realizing we are in the presence of God is so stunning, words fail us. We fall back on anthropomorphic terms because they are all we have to describe the experience when we try to share it with others. We grasp at the language of metaphor to give others an idea of what it was like, even as we know it falls short of the reality of the experience. God meets us where we are, as we are. The Holy One reaches us with whatever it takes to get our attention, to enable us to recognize that we are in the presence of the Divine, to open our hearts to receive the grace God is bestowing on us. Perhaps, like Jacob, it will be becoming aware that we are in “the house of God” or are seeing “the face of God.” More likely, it will be something unique to each of us, and we will somehow know in our hearts that we are in the presence of God, surrounded and upheld by Love.