The story, thousands of years old, is applicable today!

We learn the lesson in our youth and find it true throughout life; people are judged by how they look on the outside more so than whom they are on the inside. No story paints a better picture of this fact than the one about Leah.

Jacob, strong and handsome, was a master deceiver and would have made a “good politician.” His twin brother, who had his fill Jacob’s deceitfulness, threatened to kill him until their mother sent Jacob away under the pretense of finding a wife. He would spend the next 21 years working for the man that became his father-in-law, a master deceiver himself.

You may remember the story found in Genesis chapter 29. Jacob meets and falls in love with the very beautiful Rachel. On their wedding day, Laban, Rachel’s father, substitutes his older and much less attractive daughter Leah. Jacob didn’t know until the next day that he had married the wrong sister. How that happened I don’t know, but a few days later he married his true love, Rachel. Jacob now had two wives, but he only loved Rachel who was pretty on the outside but not on the inside. God was working in ways that Jacob didn’t understand at the time and was upset with Jacob because he didn’t love Leah.

I will leave the deeper theological meaning of the story to others in order to make one point. Society may fawn after the Rachel’s (and the Jacob’s) and shun the Leah’s, but God, who sees the heart of the lonely and broken hearted, loves the Leah’s that we often pass by.

Male and female versions of Leah are in every corner of society and the church, but none are so prominent as the millions of seniors who are shut-in or who are in care centers, many of whom rarely receive a visit, a card, a note, a touch, a hug… from anyone other than a caregiver. Elder Source exists for these, our forgotten masses!

Sincerely,
Stan Means
Elder Source Senior Ministries