Once upon a time, a man married the love of his life, Millie. Everyone saw how devoted he was to her. But she died just two years later. It so happened that Millie had a sister, Tillie. And it just so happened that the man married Tillie.
They were married for several years. People often wondered, but the man never gave any sign that he loved one sister more than the other. Then Tillie died.
The man had her buried in the same plot as Millie, but had left a space between them for the time when he passed on. Years later, on his death bed, the undertaker came to visit him. Were there any last wishes?
“Only this,” said the man, “when you bury me, bury me in my plot exactly between Millie and Tillie.”
“Is that all?” asked the undertaker. “No,” said the man. “Remember to…tilt me toward Tillie.”
The Bible tells us Jacob stole his brother’s blessing and birthright, then fled to his Uncle Laban. Jacob fell in love with Rachel, but was deceived into first marrying her sister, Leah. In the story, Leah is the not-chosen, the unloved (at most, the least loved).
But far into the story, God is finally mentioned: “The LORD saw that Leah was unloved.” And God blessed her to bear children, one of whom was Judah, the ancestor of Jesus. It is the concern of God, the attention of God, the love of God upon which the story pivots, and which may bring glory to every life.
Mary Ann Bird shares her childhood recollection of The Whisper Test. “I was born with a cleft palate, and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked to others: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth and garbled speech.
“When schoolmates asked: ‘What happened to your lip,’ I'd tell them I'd fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. It seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. I was convinced that no one outside my family could love me.
“There was, however, a teacher in the second grade whom we all adored—Mrs. Leonard by name. She was short, round, happy—a sparkling lady.
“Annually we had a hearing test. Mrs. Leonard gave the test to everyone in the class, and finally it was my turn. I knew from past years that as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper, and we would have to repeat it back—things like ‘The sky is blue’ or ‘Do you have new shoes?’ I waited there for those words that God must have put into her mouth, those seven words that changed my life.
“Mrs. Leonard said in her whisper, ‘I wish you were my little girl.’”
There’s Jacob on his deathbed, thinking back. He remembers Rachel— dying in childbirth —buried by the road that leads through Bethlehem. He remembers Leah. Though not his choice, surely God, in a grace beyond his imagining, had chosen her for him.
She had never expressed the bitterness and loneliness of those early years. She had been a lady. After Rachel died, it was Leah who had been his strength and comfort, and who raised up children unto Rachel.
And so, looking up at his sons, Jacob chooses the one that God had chosen, and he instructs them, “Bury me with Leah.” Eight generations after Jacob, Boaz, his descendant, married Ruth. At the marriage feast, the friends pronounce a wedding blessing: “May the LORD make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the House of Israel.”
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