Leah was watching. She had spent years watching her sister Rachel and watching who Jacob would gaze upon, and she was always second. Her life could be summed up as ‘loved less and seen less’.
“When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. 10 Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son. 11 Then Leah said, “What good fortune!”So she named him Gad.12 Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son. 13 Then Leah said, “How happy I am! The women will call me happy.” So she named him Asher.” (Genesis 30 v 9-13)
Rachel is still scoring more points with Jacob in her eyes, and so she gives Jacob her servant Zilpah. It really does seem an exhausting competition.
But slow down, something has changed. Leah seems to have changed. She chooses names with thoughts of fortune and happiness in mind.
The weeping unloved woman of many years, who on her wedding night was humiliated, who chose names for her first 2 children to show her misery of not being loved, has changed. The landscape has changed.
Her circumstances haven’t changed; she is still number two in the love table. Her life is still painfully complicated, but she seems not to be focusing on what she lacks. Her first four sons’ names all focused on what she didn’t have. Things are different now. The difference is her perspective on life. She is no longer looking to Jacob for her well-being. Do you see the difference? “The women will call me happy.” Her focus has changed. She has stopped looking to the same people for approval.
Joy doesn’t always arrive when circumstances change. Sometimes it arrives when we change, when we begin to notice what God is doing in the margins of our story, in the places we didn’t expect, through people and gifts we didn’t plan for.
The women would call Leah happy. And perhaps, for the first time in a long time, she was beginning to believe it herself.
Missions Paul 