I Am Heard

Beloved People of God,

It’s hard to read Leah’s story. Overlooked. Ignored. Lonely. Reading her story, it’s hard to not to get mad. We shout, “How could God allow this!” Haven’t we all felt like that at one time or another? We look at the despised circumstances in our lives and—like good Americans—we set out to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

Speaking of which, have you ever actually tried pulling yourself up by your bootstraps? It doesn’t work. A century ago, we forgot the idiom was a sarcastic critique of the impossible and not a Cinderella “rags-to-riches” fantasy. But we love an underdog, so we since the 1920s, we’ve repurposed this phrase, like Leah, seeking to accomplish the impossible through their own self-reliance and hard work. We strive, thinking we’ll be the exception, but it doesn’t take long to realize this kind of bootstrap success comes from outside ourselves.

Speaking to the Exodus generation, Moses wrote, “When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, He opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, ‘Because the Lord has seen my affliction; for now my husband will love me,’ (Genesis 29.31-32).” Guess what…it didn’t work. So, “She conceived again and bore a son, and said, ‘Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, He has given me this son also.’ And she called his name Simeon,” (29.33). She was half right. The Lord saw her and He heard her, but not for the reason she envisioned. Leah thought she could lift herself up by her marital bootstraps, making Jacob love her through the sons she gave him. This way only leads to tripping ourselves up; but that doesn’t keep us from trying.

Beloved, when we’re busy grasping at shoestrings, we miss why God sees and hears us. We conflate His blessings with our ambitions. Eventually we come crashing down—either on our face or our knees—seeing that we’ve missed out on what His presence was saying to us all along. Truth is, the Lord listens to our prayer (Psalm 34.18). Even more so, He answers us in accordance with His will (1 John 5.13-15). And that is the lift we long for.

For Christ the King, 

Brett