"Leah" Part I - In the shadow of my sister (the unwanted)
I just finished a book (that my mom read too) called “Finding Comfort” by Nelson Dy. It’s a compilation of stories of Bible men and women who’ve gone through incredible difficulties in their lives and how God, our Great God, not only comforted them in times of trouble BUT also bailed them out of their otherwise seemingly hopeless situation.
My favorite chapter is the one entitled “The Unloved Wife” and the story is about one of the Bible’s infamous love stories, the love triangle of Jacob, Rachel and Leah (Genesis 29:17-35, 49:31). Now most people remember Jacob, the lover who served his father in-law 14 years for the woman of his dreams and Rachel who was the object of that affection but what about Leah, the unwanted third party in the story? Does anyone ever remember her?
Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favored. – Gen. 29:17
I’m sure a lot of us women have experienced being compared to another girl. She may be a sister, a friend, church mate etc. And more often than we like, we fair badly compared to her. She’s more beautiful, more intelligent, more charming, taller, thinner, all the superficial superlatives you can think of. And sometimes people are just mean or plain insensitive rubbing it in all the time.
I’m thinking Leah must’ve really felt insecure (just concluding) next to Rachel that she settled for her dad’s suggestion to trick Jacob, get him really wasted and then sleep with him, he’d have no choice then but to take her in the morning. Leah must’ve thought (or just obeyed her father too) “I’ll never get any guy, I’m just too ugly compared to my sister, so yeah, dad is right, I’ll just have to get that low and resort to trickery in order for anyone to take me”. So, they did (Gen. 29:22 -23). Now, doesn’t that just break your heart?
We may be a Leah too in the modern times, someone who doesn’t have that beauty or lovely form and have experienced discrimination and mistreatment because of our appearance, weight or deformity, but I assure you we can’t be that worthless that no one can love us.
Our loving Father, in fact, loves us beyond measure that HE gave HIS only Son to die on the cross for us to secure our future. And He loves us in whatever form, shape or size we’re in.
We will see, as we continue to study Leah further (I’m doing a series on this) that at the beginning she had everything working against her but she had God’s favor. We will see how God turned everything around for Leah.
To be continued…
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