Such a great sermon Sunday. Now don't take me word for word on this, OK? I ain't no preacher. But the sermon was about Jacob, Leah and Rachel. In Genesis 27:1 Jacob tricks his father, Isaac, and steals his brother, Esau's blessing (Jacob and Esau's Dad had bad eyes). Fast forward when Jacob became a grown man. Jacob worked seven years without pay for a man named Laban just for the right to marry Laban's beautiful daughter Rachel. But Laban tricked Jacob and ended up giving Jacob his oldest daughter, Leah, instead. Jacob did not realize he had been tricked until after he woke up with his new bride, Leah (Leah would have been heavily veiled during the wedding ceremony and perhaps Jacob had too much alcohol at the reception????). In any event, Jacob was devastated to find after hard labor for seven years he still had not been given the beautiful Rachel he longed for like he had been promised. Instead he had received Rachel's "weak eyed" sister, Leah. Not sure what "weak eyed" means, but the Bible makes it pretty clear that Leah was not a looker like Rachel. Now that would stink!
This tells me that God is saying, "what goes around comes around," so we better watch out! I have to believe when "the morning after" arrived and Jacob discovered he had been tricked into marrying Leah, he thought back to the time when he tricked his Dad into giving him his brother Esau's blessing. But I think there is a deeper message to the story. No matter how hard she tried, poor weak eyed Leah could not make Jacob love her. In the meantime, Jacob never stopped mooning over Rachel. After seven more long years of labor, Laban finally gave Rachel to Jacob as his second wife, but their marriage was full of problems because Rachel, despite her beauty, was a very jealous woman and always envious for something someone else had (including Leah's children). Long story short, Leah stayed unhappy longing after a relationship with Jacob; Jacob stayed unhappy longing after a relationship with Rachel; and Rachel stayed unhappy longing after a marital relationship she found unsatisfying because of her jealously. The moral of the sermon was that we worry way, way too much about "relationships" with other people (not just spouses) thinking if I could just make this person or that person love me then I could be happy. The truth is all we need is the Lord, and it is our relationship with Him we need to focus on first and foremost. We need to get that relationship right; then, and only then can we be happy. Ahhh... this really is a great story, and I recommend you pick up your Bible and read it for yourself -- or if you can't wait, click here and read it right now!
The church's new add-on.
Dinner out after church.
Notice the empty chair. When you're really bad you get sent to the car and your food is up for grabs -- bummer.
Not a great picture? After a certain age you take what you can get.
