February 27, 2019

God’s Bigger Story

Leah.  The oldest daughter of Laban and older sister of Rachel.  Leah’s name alone was foreboding – it meant “wild cow.”  Her beauty paled in contrast to Rachel and an eye condition seemed to define her.  Forced by Laban into a marriage with Jacob, she was the commodity that satisfied tradition, and yet she was unloved, unwanted, and desperate for both love and respect.  Jacob’s anger toward Laban demanded Rachel as well, and birthing babies became a contest between the two women, and a prayerful longing on Leah’s part for her husband to give what she was desperate for.  The One she cried out to though, and the One she confided in, was the God who had a much bigger story to tell.  

Charles Stanley teaches 30 life principles drawn from God’s Word, principles to help us fulfill the potential God has for us.  In one of those principles, trust is defined as looking beyond what we are able to see to what Godsees – the bigger story, His story.  A story that weaves the intricacies of our lives with the lives of others and with the purposes of God and creates a picture based on hope, secure in His love for us, beautified with the essence of good and the ultimate glorifying of the God who brings it all together.  Sometimes, alone in our own little, insecure corner of the world, threatened by its unfairness, its difficulties, hardships, tragedies, and confusion -- scarred by the past and chronically discouraged in the present – it seems impossible to see a picture bigger than the muck I am trudging through.   Leah knew the muck and she had a history of muck, and yet Leah made a choice to see and know and experience her God.  She lived the definition of trust and she lived it by choosing God, depending on Him, and leaving it all in His hands.  Like us, she could have easily looked in the mirror of her circumstances and found much to reactively hold her in its unfairness.

As we discussed Charles Stanley’s principle about trust in our ladies Bible study class, we defined too the word we interchange with trust, even if technically, some would define them differently.  Faith, as a verb, captures the essence of trust.  An acrostic I learned decades ago says, “Forsaking All I Trust Him.”  There is so, so much I can’t fully grasp.  So much I can’t control.  So much I long to know the outcome of.  So much that enters into my fears, distorts my thinking, confuses my emotions.  But I can make a choice.  At the fork in the road, whatever that fork may be, I can choose my God, walk with Him, depend on Him, and leave “it” fully and completely in His hands – and I will probably repeat that process over and over.  And I will walk without sight into the future, into the bigger story God wants to tell, knowing that God loves me and cares for me, just as He did with Leah, and knowing God will weave all the details together – some day, somehow.  Leah birthed seven children within her marriage to Jacob, but even then, God wasn’t finished.  It was through Leah, and not Rachel, that over 2,000 years later, God birthed His Son into our world.  We wait, but not without hope.  We have a God whose story is far greater than the one we can see.

                                                             – Bev


(Related Bible reading: Genesis 29:31-35; 30:17-21; and Leah’s son, Judah, shows up in Matthew 1:1-3)