loved

There are some real-world outcomes to the fact that God is love. Sometimes I forget that this is God’s primary attribute. As I remember God as provider and God as judge, I sometimes forget that he is the thing that defines what love is and shows it to the world. 

This morning,I read this, from Genesis 29:31-30: “When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, ‘It is because the Lord has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.’

She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, ‘Because the Lord heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too.’ So she named him Simeon.

Again she conceived, and when she gave birth to a son she said, ‘Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.’ So he was named Levi.

She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, ‘This time I will praise the Lord.’ So she named him Judah. Then she stopped having children.

When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, ‘Give me children, or I’ll die!’

Jacob became angry with her and said, ‘Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?’”

I feel sorry for Leah – it wasn’t her fault she wasn’t as pretty as Rachel. It wasn’t her fault her dad pawned her off onto her husband, in a sneaky, underhanded way that started her marriage off on a really bad footing. Imagine what it must have felt like after only two weeks of marriage for your husband to bring the woman he really loves into your tent!

God saw, and God cared, because God is love and love is what he wants for his children. God did the thing only God can do: he sent children to Leah and with-held them from Rachel. Ironically, Rachel takes it out on Jacob. Rachel demands from Jacob what only God can give; Leah begs from Jacob what God expects everyone to give.

In the end, Leah sees the great blessing in being loved by God even though she isn’t by her husband. It reminds me that while human love is fickle, God’s love is constant.