www.bible.com/reading-plans/9114/day/3

As a child, I constantly felt rejected, by my mother and my friends. I felt rejected by my mother because she really didn’t like me and told me so constantly. She verbalized how ugly I was and how I needed to study hard because no man would ever be able to love me. I was rejected by my friends because I couldn’t run and play as they did, and they were not happy to just sit and play board games or jacks with me inside. So, in my loneliness, I turned to books. It sounds silly now, but I often went into what we called the “big bathroom” because it was the main bathroom with a tub and a shower, and I would sit on the toilet with a book and while silent tears rolled down my cheeks and sing “Jesus Loves Me.” A sweet and caring neighbor invited me to Sunday school and church and I had learned that song and its truth. I was probably around twelve years old when this was happening, so I really feel foolish now as I write these words, but that song gave me comfort for many years, long before I knew Jesus as my Savior.

I am absolutely amazed that Leah, the rejected one, is in the lineage of our Savior because she is the wife who gave birth to Judah. Jacob preferred Rachel, but God showed favor to Leah and seemed to make up to her the fact that Jacob obviously preferred Rachel. Judah’s name indicates that Leah had accepted Jacob’s rejection and was clinging to a relationship with God.

We have all been rejected in some way at some time by someone. We each have to come to the place where we realize we have been redeemed by a Savior who is bigger, better, more powerful and more loving than we could possibly ever imagine. I am who I am today because of some of the traumas of my childhood, but also mostly because God has redeemed me and given me a husband, children and grandchildren who accept and love me just the way I am. That’s the love that God has for me, too, a love that is hard to understand but so wonderful to know!