I love reading about the real lives of men and women in the Bible. They are inspirational, real people like you and me, whose stories have been captured for all of humankind to read.
Like this story of Jacob.
One night as he slept, he had a dream of a ladder that extended to heaven, and on this ladder angels were going up and down, and at the top of the ladder stood the Lord, who spoke to him in that dream and gave him a promise of his future and the destiny that was on his life, and the lives of those who would come from his family line.
Jacob’s life also includes a fairy-tale like love story. You know, the kind that includes the most beautiful of women, someone who wants to prevent them from being together, and a passionate, heroic love that stirs Jacob to fight for years to earn the prize of his beloved.
“So Jacob worked seven years to pay for Rachel. But his love for her was so strong that it seemed to him but a few days.”
Genesis 39:20 (NLT)
That’s the kind of love from a man that girls dream of to this day. The “fight for me, do whatever it takes, overcome any obstacle, you are my destiny, I want you more than anyone” type of love. With a bizarre twist, however, Jacob ends up marrying his true love’s sister! (I’m telling you, you’ve got to read this story! Genesis 29) But like all fairy tales, they find themselves together at last. (Of course, now Jacob has two wives…)!
Fast forward many, many years. Jacob’s other wife, Leah, has borne him many children, as have his wive’s maidens. And finally, his true love, Rachel, once seemingly infertile, gets pregnant with a child of her own, as God looks down at her with pity and opens her once barren womb. The child growing in her belly is a boy, whose story, like theirs, would be recorded for the rest of history, for all of humanity to read and discover.
I can only imagine what Jacob must have felt when the love of his life, the one he worked for so hard to win, finally gave birth to a child of their own. This was the start of the fulfillment of the dream he had many, many years earlier. It took years – failures and mistakes, challenges, season of excitement and change – before this son that was promised was delivered.
You may be in your own season of waiting for the promises of the Lord to be fulfilled in your life. Take heart, God’s purpose will prevail. Every dream He has placed in your heart WILL come to pass. Let this Scripture encourage you to stay the course until the promise comes to pass.
For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it;
it will surely come; it will not delay.
Habakkuk 2:3 (ESV)
