Two weeks ago I started a series of sermons in the life of Jacob entitled “One Life”. Jacob is the easiest biblical character for us modern people to relate to mainly because there’s nothing worth emulating in his life. There has never been a civilization in history like ours — so proud of being broken. The more I study his life the more I’m convinced that if the Gospel can pierce though his reality it can pierce through any of us bankrupt heroes.

This week for instance I was studying Genesis 29 and it struck me the way that Jacob was deceived by his uncle-father-in-law-boss and, match Laban. Jacob worked 7 years so that he would have Laban’s youngest daughter Rachel. When the 7 year term was completed, Laban throws Jacob a wedding party and veils his eldest Leah and gives her instead. After being wasted and going into a tent with no electric light Jacob goes to bed in romance and wakes up with reality. “-Damn! I thought you were Rachel!” He probably added (as I heard a rabbinic scholar quoted) , “I called you Rachel in the dark and you didn’t say anything!” to which she probably responded: “Your dad called you in the dark and you didn’t say anything either. Did you?”.

It’s amazing the things we do to get the things we want. We think that all our hard work will finally pay off once we get to be in bed with it. Once we get to be one flesh with it. To our surprise when the day light creeps in through the breaches in the room the day after, we find out that we have been deceived — it was never Rachel. We acknowledge that the longing remains and our commitment of servitude to the real object of our desire has only intensified. We find out that 7 more years are need. And then 7 more… and then 7 more. We are always enslaved and therefore vulnerable to be manipulated by those like Laban who will not miss an opportunity to take advantage of our state.

There’s only one love that’s worth pursuing and devoting our whole lives to, he’s the only love that will assure us that he will be the same person you  will wake up to in the morning and, he’s the only one that will not demand of you for he was the one that gave all of himself to you. He’s a lover while all the others smell like lovers, in reality are pimps.