There Abraham and his wife Sarah were buried, there Isaac and his wife Rebekah were buried, and there I buried Leah. (Genesis 49:31)Things never turn out like you think.
The Old Testament patriarch Jacob, who later became Israel, had two wives, Rachel and Leah. He wanted Rachel to begin with but was tricked into marrying Leah, too. He never really loved her and she knew it. She was the one to have children first and when she did she would say, now maybe my husband will love me (Genesis 29:32).
When Rachel finally started having children, they were Jacob’s favorites. But Rachel died in childbirth with Benjamin, her second, and was buried along the road.
When Leah died, they were where they meant to be and she was buried in the ancestral tomb. That was where the old man Jacob wanted to be buried.
The irony of it all is that Leah finally won. When Jacob died, he went to lie beside her for eternity, so to speak. Rachel was buried somewhere with a big pile of rocks. Leah got Jacob in the end all to herself.
Life is strange. And it never goes like you think it should. You plan like a madman for something, then whap! Something else happens. All of your planning is up in smoke.
Then again, you do some little trivial thing and it turns out to be momentous.
Twice in my life I have sent out a boatload of resumes for positions in churches (this was before the Foursquare Church). And twice, a position I wanted came up out of the blue.
I walked into a bowling alley in 1969 and there was my wife. I got a letter from a friend in 1974 encouraging me to apply for a position as youth minister at a small town in West Texas and I realized and accepted the call and went to seminary. I walked into a church building in a moment of despair and made a good friend.
The things I thought were important to begin with, I hardly ever pay attention to.
Leah never dreamed she would end up with Jacob by herself with his full attention, again so to speak. But there she was in the tomb. And Rachel was not there to steal her husband’s heart.
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