When Love Wears a Veil
By Rich Bitterman
God doesn’t just see the unloved. He writes redemption through them.
Genesis 29 (IMAGE: When Love Wears a Veil)
Jacob arrives at a well.
It doesn’t look like much. A stone lid. Sheep pressed into the shadows. Three shepherds waiting on nothing in particular. But if you tilt your head just right, you can almost hear the footsteps of providence echoing on the dust.
He’s come from miles of regret, walking east with a lie behind him and a promise underfoot. Esau wants him dead. Rebekah sent him running. His only compass is the memory of a dream of a staircase stretched into the sky, angels coming and going, and God at the top whispering, “I am with you.”
Now, here in the still heat of midday, he asks, “Do you know Laban?”
They nod.
“Is he well?”
He is.
And “His daughter Rachel is coming.”
Jacob watches. She moves toward the well with a flock behind her, sleeves rolled, eyes focused. A shepherdess. The kind of woman who knows how to carry things.
Jacob steps forward. His hands close around the stone that covers the well, and he heaves. No one helps. He rolls it alone.
Sometimes, love announces itself in silence. Not with flowers or speeches. Just a man lifting a burden he didn’t have to lift, and a girl watching, wondering why.
He waters her sheep. He kisses her. And then, without warning, he breaks down and weeps.
Seven Years Felt Like a Breath
Jacob offers Laban a deal. Just this:
“I’ll work seven years for her.”
And he does. Seven summers of sweat. Seven winters of cold ground and sheep that don’t listen. Seven years of watching her from across the camp, wondering if her laugh will still sound the same a decade from now.
Verse 20 reads like a hymn:
“So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.”
When you love someone rightly, time folds in on itself. Sacrifice stops being sacrifice. Every sore muscle becomes a whispered vow.
This wasn’t lust masquerading as love. This was covenant before the altar was built.
Love doesn’t rush. Love waits. And Jacob waited.
But waiting doesn’t guarantee a clean ending. Not in this world.
The Wedding That Wasn’t
The feast was full. The wine poured easily. The night came heavy. And then Laban moved in the dark with his plans and his silence.
He slipped Leah into the tent.
No one said a word.
Morning always comes eventually.
When Jacob woke, it wasn’t Rachel’s eyes staring back.
It was Leah’s.
He staggers out of the tent, rage rising like steam. “What is this you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that I served you?”
He’s angry, but he’s not innocent. The man who once dressed in his brother’s skin now finds himself wrapped in another deception. God is not mocked, but He is merciful. He lets Jacob taste his own medicine, bitter and strong.
Laban shrugs. “In our country, the younger doesn’t marry before the firstborn.”
The sentence lands like a stone dropped in a well. The younger before the firstborn. That’s the script Jacob wrote himself into back home.
Now it’s being read back to him by a man more crooked than he is.
He finishes the bridal week. Then he gets Rachel too…after seven more years of labor.
He has both sisters now. One he loves. One he never wanted.
And under the surface, sorrow begins to bloom.
The Woman No One Chose
Leah.
Her name means weary.
Her eyes are soft, maybe too soft, like they’ve spent years straining to be seen.
She didn’t ask for this wedding. Her father gave her away like a secret. She walks into a marriage without invitation, without romance, without even her name on her husband’s lips.
She is a wife by deception. A mother by necessity. A woman wrapped in a story she didn’t write.
But God sees.
Verse 31:
“When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, He opened her womb.”
That’s the hinge of the whole chapter.
She gives birth to four sons. And each time, she names her pain.
Reuben.
“Surely now my husband will love me.”
But he doesn’t.
Simeon.
“The Lord has heard that I am unloved.”
But nothing changes.
Levi.
“Now he will be attached to me.”
But Jacob’s arms still reach for someone else.
Then comes Judah.
And something shifts.
“This time,” she says, “I will praise the Lord.”
Not “He will love me.”
Not “He will see me.”
Just: “I will praise.”
This is the sound of a woman stepping out of her hunger for human affection and placing her trembling hope into the hands of God.
Judah means praise.
And through Judah, one day, a baby will cry out in Bethlehem.
From the unloved woman comes the Lion of Judah.
From the veiled bride comes the unveiled Savior.
God sees what man overlooks. And He builds empires through unwanted wombs.
When Marriage Hurts and Love Disappoints
Let’s be honest: this chapter doesn’t tie itself into a pretty bow.
Rachel, though beautiful, brings idols into the house. Leah, though faithful, never captures Jacob’s heart. Jacob, though chosen, plays favorites. Love here is not tidy. It’s tangled. It bleeds.
And maybe that’s why it matters so much.
Some of you reading this carry the ache of being the Leah in someone’s story. You are faithful, present, willing and unseen.
Some of you married your Rachel, only to discover the idols she carried couldn’t be burned with desire alone.
Some of you are waiting. Waiting like Jacob worked…quietly, painfully, sacrificially. And you wonder if love will ever lift the stone from your chest.
God sees.
He sees the way Leah was seen. He opens the womb. He names the pain. He writes Judah into the genealogy of Christ and lets Leah’s tears water the soil of redemption.
No love is wasted when it is offered to God.
Even the love that gets rejected.
Even the love that waits for seven years and wakes up next to disappointment.
Even the love that never gets returned.
God writes resurrection into the margins of unloved stories.
For the One Still Waiting
If you’re single, and it feels like a sentence, not a season…lift your eyes.
You may be the answer to someone else’s unlovedness.
You may be the arms God uses to carry those left behind.
And if the years stretch long and the wait grows heavy, let them be years of service, not sorrow. Years of building something beautiful in the quiet. Years that feel like a few days because of the love you have for Christ.
The Final Veil
One day, the veil will be lifted from every story. We will see what we didn’t see. The rejected will be honored. The barren will laugh. The unloved will be known.
And the groom, Christ, will gather His bride. Not Rachel the radiant, but Leah the forgotten. Not perfect love stories, but broken ones healed.
Jacob kissed Rachel and wept.
But Jesus? He kissed death and rose again.
So take your place in the story. You don’t need to be the favorite to be chosen. You don’t need to be seen by them to be seen by Him. You don’t need seven years or a wedding tent.
You need only this:
The God who sees.
The God who waits.
The God who opens wombs, rewrites names, and calls unloved people into eternity.
And perhaps—just perhaps—He has always done His best work with those nobody else wanted.
I’m Pastor Rich Bitterman, a country preacher from the Ozarks. Guy Howard, the old Walking Preacher, once wore out his boots traveling from church to church, meeting strangers and sharing the gospel. I’m doing the same today on digital roads. Each post is a visit. Each verse is a step. Let’s walk the Word together.