Beholding and Holding (on)

"Pilate then took Jesus and scourged Him. And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and put a purple robe on Him; and they began to come up to Him and say, "Hail, King of the Jews!" and to give Him slaps in the face. Pilate came out again and *said to them, "Behold, I am bringing Him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in Him." Jesus then came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.
Pilate *said to them, "Behold, the Man!"
John 19:1-5

"So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.”
Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there."
Genesis 32:24-29

Ecce homo- "Behold the Man!" Pilate declared as Jesus was brought out at Pilate's orders to a frenzied, but mixed crowd. The loudest voices were those screaming "Crucify", but I know in my spirit that others were there. In that crowd were unbelievers with hardened hearts and the religious struggling to hold onto high positions, those offended by Jesus because He had "upset their apple carts"-upsetting life as they had known it... There were avowed disciples, and secret believers like Nicodemus, Joseph of Arithmea, others who had known about Jesus' ministry but had yet remained uninvolved because they were too busy with their own lives, just trying to get by...
It occurred to me that the different attitudes of this crowd represented the various stages of my spiritual life. When the person of Jesus confronted me face to face, His life, sacrifice and death, resurrection, His grace, mercy, and his Love, His holiness-my beholding all of Him, everything was changed, as surely as the lives of the people in the crowd were forever changed, just as the lives of those who behold Jesus, really behold Him, are inexorably and forever impacted today.
How then do we live after beholding Immanuel-God with us?
We hold on, pursue Him and His ways, seek Him, not wrestling against Him any longer, but embracing Him through it all.
Behold Him today, beloved, and hold on.