How Jacob, at the end of his life, asked to be buried with her, not Rachel.
Not the beloved Rachel.
Not the one he labored fourteen years for.
Leah.
And as I read and digested the post, I realized there's even more to uncover in this story we all know.
Later in the day, I had a chat with my younger brother about this and as we peeled the onions, we started to see a pattern that felt uncomfortably familiar.
Rachel was who Jacob chose.
Leah was who God used.
Rachel made sense emotionally.
Leah made sense eternally.
And let’s be honest… most of us would pick Rachel.
We gravitate toward what feels right, what looks right, what validates us.
There's nothing wrong with that...feelings matter. After all, God created them.
But feelings don’t always see far enough.
Because while Jacob was building a love story,
God was building a lineage.
Somehow we like to believe that what we strongly DESIRE must automatically align with purpose.
But Scripture doesn’t always support that.
Leah was unloved… and she knew it.
You can see it in how she named her children...almost like she was hoping each one would finally make Jacob see her.
Until she shifted her focus to God.
By the time Judah comes, she’s no longer trying to earn love.
“Now will I praise the Lord.” Gen 29:35
That’s someone who finally got it.
That’s someone who stopped fighting for validation and started aligning with God.
Rachel, on the other hand…
the loved one…
carried idols from her father's house - Gen 31:19
That part is easy to skip, but it matters.
Jacob may not have loved Leah,
but Leah had come to know and love the God of Jacob.
Then you see something else.
Rachel dies giving birth to her second child.
Leah lives on.
And you start wondering… did God see something Jacob didn’t?
Because sometimes what we insist on…
what we feel we must have…
is not built for the full journey.
And then this part ties it all together for me.
Joseph, Rachel’s son, the favored one… goes through all that pain, betrayal, prison…
And when he finally speaks, he says:
“God sent me ahead… to preserve life.” Gen 45:5
Preserve who?
Judah.
Leah’s son.
The line Jesus would come through.
So the son of the woman Jacob loved…
was used to protect the destiny of the woman he didn’t.
That’s not coincidence.
That’s God quietly rearranging everything.
Maybe that’s the part we don’t like.
God doesn’t always build around our preferences.
He builds around His purpose.
And sometimes… the thing you didn’t choose
is the very place He chose to do something eternal.
One question we should always ask when it seems we have our preference, but life keeps bringing something that was never part of the equation
“What is God doing here that I might be missing?”
Because Jacob started with feelings…
but he ended with alignment.
And that difference matters.
👣 Be Better. 💛 Love Better. 🙌🏾 Do Better...
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