HOPE DEFERRED

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. ~Proverbs 13:12

The mark of a barren woman is that boundless hope once thrived within your heart. Rachel, as the promised wife—mother— of a nation was full of hope. She was fertile ground for the seed of promise to be sown in. She was greatly loved, she was greatly pursued, she was well favored, young and beautiful.

And she was chosen, handpicked by God to be Jacob’s wife.

This was the revealed will of God. Jacob had been instructed to go and to “take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother's brother.” How much clearer could that be? And the purpose was just as clear: Rachel was to be the mother of “a multitude of people” (see Genesis 28:2-3). In this the promise of God to Abraham and Sarah lived in Jacob and Rachel.

No doubt Rachel spoke of “things that were not” as though they were, because the very nature of hope is an expectation that things are going to work out right. They had probably picked out the names of their first five children, especially the firstborn—that was most important. You would have found it impossible to discourage them at this point. Speaking to the “mountain” was no stretch for Rachel’s faith: she owned the mountain!

But sometimes God allows hope to be deferred. And it becomes apparent that you are on a fast track to a slow painful death to hope, in the natural. Everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. Everybody seems to pass you by.

To Rachel’s horror Jacob’s firstborn—the heir to the birthright—came through Leah: “And Leah conceived, and bare a son, and she called his name Reuben.” And then Leah had Simeon, Levi, and Judah. It was beginning to look like Rachel was going to lose her “birthright” to her sister. Sound familiar.

Reckon Jacob noticed?

I think it would have been hard to miss the fact that what Jacob had done to his brother, Leah—through Laban’s sin—was in a sense doing to her sister. Maybe that is why when he was faced with the problem, he got angry:

And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die. And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel: and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? ~Genesis 30:1-2

One thing is for sure: Rachel was asking the wrong person. Man in his best state altogether can’t meet your deepest need. Only God can. And the truth is, that need is not children or houses or mates or a thousand other things. That need is to know the Lord your God and to find your very existence, the core of your being wrapped up in his will. And His will is for you to be in his presence and to serve him with joy, trusting him, loving him, obeying him.

We know this to be true because "hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life." Jesus is the tree of life, the highest desire of man.