(If you want to hear Lori read the story click) here

 

 

 

Last weekend I was a vendor at a craft sale. I brought three armloads of little girls' dresses and doll clothes. I have been making them all summer, picking just the right buttons, and adding lace at the hemlines. I mix fabrics, and add ribbons where small girls look for them. 

 

I love my dresses, and have put many hours into creating them.

Dozens of people walked by my table, picking them up and exclaiming over the fabrics and quilted bodices. One has a tiny toucan pieced from bright batiks scraps no bigger than a thumbnail. Another has a quilt block of a Christmas tree with gifts made of buttons and a star at the top. Others were made from Swedish fabric with Tomtens on it, given to me by a friend who lived there. 

 

Mothers and children enjoyed looking at the dresses, and if my read of their body language is correct, longed to take them home. But then came the price tag. Twenty or thirty dollars is not pocket change, and as they weighed the buying power remaining in this week's budget, every single person kept walking.

 

Except one. She picked a pink doll dress for her granddaughter and when I did not have quite enough change, she told me to keep it. That felt nice. 

 

This week my spiritual growth class is about the story in Genesis where Jacob meets Rachel. He is stunned by her beauty, and moved a large rock so that she could water her sheep. He wanted to marry her and her father agreed, as long as Jacob worked for seven years first. The line that follows is one of my favorite in the whole of the Word.

 

because of the love he had for her.  Genesis 29

 

The section of the story that I do not like comes next. Jacob followed his part of the deal and worked for Rachel's father for seven years, caring for the herds of sheep. But on the wedding night, Laban slipped his older daughter Leah in as Jacob's new bride instead of Rachel. As a young child I bristled at this deception. What a lousy man Laban was to fool Jacob!! When Jacob wakes up and sees not Rachel, but Leah, he is outraged. Yet Jacob says that if he will work for seven more years he can have Rachel as a wife too.