Falling in love. The magic every girl dreams of and the hopes that end with romance, marriage, children and a loving family who adores you. I remember being a teenager, and the hopes that the boy I had fallen in love with, would want to at least sit by me at camp. That was the end all it seemed. Get to sit together at camp. The hoping that someone would think I was worth pursuing, someone would want me, someone would love me, all wrapped up in a teenager’s brain with a few other crazy ideas about romance that could never be actualized. 50 years plus years later, I see how silly it was, and yet not. We all desperately want to be loved. We want to be chosen. We want to be wanted. Some of our lives work out that way. Often not the way we dreamed, but God has allowed, in my case, for me to marry someone. My father always joked that I should see the world. I could always find someone to marry. Yes, and no. Yes, you can always find someone to marry, but the someone being the best one, is not always as simple. No, it didn’t work out for me timewise; I did travel the world and hadn’t found the right one since I was never going to live in Minnesota, never marry a farmer and never be a teacher. God has a way of changing the imaginations into reality, and when I fell, I fell hard. For a farmer, living in Minnesota, and I had become a teacher!
Falling in love, having that someone wants me for whom I am, is a dream. For Leah, in Genesis, it was a nightmare. She saw the young men of the village look at her, then look away at Rachel. The Bible says she had “weak eyes”, not meaning she couldn’t see, but that she wasn’t what you turned your head back to look again. Rachel had it. The young men knew and walked right by the heart waiting to be loved, to the heart everyone easily loved.
I can’t imagine what was going through Leah’s heart when her father made the switch. Well, to be honest, I can’t imagine what was going through Rachel’s heart when she realized it wasn’t her wedding night: it wasn’t her wedding. Genesis 29 doesn’t give us details, just facts. I want details. I want to know where Rachel was hiding. I want to know how Leah never spoke, which would have been a dead giveaway to Jacob. I want to know how he didn’t know. I want to know what was going through Laban’s mind, and the mother’s heart. We don’t know, but I know what I would have been thinking. I may not have been on the godly inspirational side of my mind.
Genesis 29:23-27 “But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and Jacob made love to her. Laban gave his servant Zilpah to his daughter as her attendant. When morning came, there was Leah! So, Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn’t I? Why have you deceived me?” Laban replied, “It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one. Finish this daughter’s bridal week; then we will give you the younger one also, in return for another seven years of work.”
Laban took advantage of the social norm of their culture. That’s one question Jacob may have wished he had brought in the fireside chats with him and Laban.
Leah: got the kiss not intended for her. That first kiss of ecstasy, that being wanted, that returning for more, and all that led to the wedding night wasn’t intended for her. She stole her sisters joy and delight, and the feeling wasn’t one of excitement but of fear. What happens when he finds out? He wants my sister. He got me. She knew the culture norm, she knew Jacob and she understood her sister.
We know the rest of the story, and it wasn’t happily ever after. Leah spent her life trying for that first kiss that was intended for her lips, and for the “being wanted and adored” that Rachel had. I don’t’ know, I am not totally projected, but her value was placed in her sons, and that value never equated the adoring first kiss of being loved, wanted and sought after.
We walk through life with many of the same dreams. We want to be wanted. We want that first kiss to be intended for us from our loving father. He does! He loves! He doesn’t care about our weak eyes, he wants our heart. He reaches for us, he searches until he finds us and his arms are open wide regardless of the detours our lives have chosen looking for that first kiss meant for us.
“The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love, he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” – Zephaniah 3:17
Leah wanted someone to take delight in her. We all do. Rachel had to live with knowing that first kiss intended for her, was given to her sister, who didn’t earn it and wanted it to be special on her own. Yet, God redeemed their lives, provided for and guided them. Leah is in the lineage of Christ, being the mother of Judah. Often, the things God has planned for our lives, we don’t see because of the forest. We see the trees we are standing amidst but cannot see the beautiful forest itself. God does have a plan. He will rejoice over us, and he takes delight in us. If our choices took us down the wrong fork in the road, or as in Leah and Rachel’s case, someone else’s decision caused the detour, God always knows where we are, wants us, desires us and will rejoice over us. Give God the chance to redeem the moments that you may never be able to relive, but that he can make them steppingstones to a better tomorrow.
Enjoyed this read. Had never thought it all through but had some of the same thoughts you had. Rachel was pretty on the outside but she did some not pretty inside things. You get the feeling Leah was more humble but…..?
Great thoughts about Leah, she had a difficult path to walk. I love your reminder to use the past as steppingstones to a better future. I also have so many questions about the details from that wedding night as well. We will wait until heaven to get our answers. Thank you, Marette