I jumped back in time a few thousand years from where I’d been in Acts recently and dove into the life of the Patriarchs of the Bible–namely Jacob. (Using a great study by Beth Moore.)
Until this morning, the following irony had been lost on me.
Jacob posed as his older brother to get his father’s blessing.
Then, here in Genesis 29, Jacob gets a taste of his own medicine when Laban poses his older daughter, Leah, as his younger daughter Rachel.
Even if Jacob had too much to drink and Leah wore a veil, I’m thinking, how can he not have known this wasn’t the woman he had loved for the last 7 years?
As one commentary said, “The story offers a powerfully ironic comment on the love of visible beauty, and shows as well the unreliability of trusting alone to sight. For where is beauty in the dark?”
Contrast Jacob’s sight-heavy love for Rachel and the love I see in Philippians 1:9 that Paul prays for those believers in Philippi:
“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound [excel, be plentiful] more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you may be able to discern what is best and [you] may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ…”
This is the kind of love I want to grow into, more and more–a love that’s wise, grounded and mature.
