Dear Christa—
In Godly Girls we do a
one-day lesson on Leah, “the unloved wife.” I’ve always had a soft spot for
Leah. She wasn’t attractive. She couldn’t see, and her day was long before the
time of contact lenses or even a pair of glasses, for that matter. She got her
husband through deception.
Jacob hadn’t chosen her.
Yes, he would keep his vows; he would provide for her; he would meet his
obligations. He may have even cared a great deal for her.
But, he did not love her.
Leah could no more earn Jacob’s love anymore than we can earn God’s.
For love is something that
can only be freely given by the lover, and Jacob only truly loved Rachel.
It seems to me that a wife’s
greatest desire is simply to be loved by her husband. Maybe that’s part of what
God was talking about when he told Eve that the woman would desire her husband.
It’s easy during the
children years to get distracted. Children take a lot of work. Throw in a job,
financial issues, illness, and who knows what else, and after long years of
being together, people can keep their vows, provide for each other, meet their
obligations, and even care a great deal about each other, what about love?
In our day, there aren’t
other spouses to compete with, but there is a lot of stuff. Married couples
should ask themselves who they’d want to be with more than anyone else in the
world. Hopefully, the answer would be each other.
--the parishioner who doesn’t
do anything.
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