::I found a post linking back to one of mine, which led me to an article and to write the following blog post. I hope to blog on additional themes raised in the article in the future. Please read the linked article in full; it is excellent.::

Writer Timothy J. Keller, in working from the text of Genesis 29:15–35, shared something C. S. Lewis wrote in a chapter about hope:

Most people, if they really learn to look into their own heart [and that's what I'm urging you to do right now] most people if they really learn to look into their own hearts would know that they do want and want acutely something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love or first think of some foreign country or first take up some subject that excites us are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning can ever really satisfy. I am not speaking of what would ordinarily be called unsuccessful marriages or failures of holidays and so on. I’m speaking of the very best possible ones. There is always something we have grasped at. There’s always something in that first moment of longing but fades away in the reality. The spouse may be a good spouse. The scenery has been excellent. It turned out to be a good job. But it’s evaded us. In the morning it’s always Leah.

Keller expounds further on this idea of Lewis’, how, no matter what we think we have, the morning brings Leah.

You overhear people saying, essentially, Oh, I’m going to have such a career. I’m going to get myself a hunk. I’m going to get myself a babe. And I’m going to live in this place, and I’m going to live in this place, and I’m going to live in this place. And I am going to have a life. In the morning it’s always Leah. This is a miniature of the disillusionment which is our lot from Eden onwards.

Eventually, it is definitely going to come through. Eventually, you’re going to see it. And when you do there are only four possible ways of responding to that. There are only four ways to go, and you’re going to have to choose one of them and it will totally shape the rest of your life.

1. You’ll either blame the things you have and say I’ve got to get better ones—better woman, better man, better job.
2. Or secondly, you’ll blame yourself and just hate yourself.
3. Or thirdly, you’ll blame life and you’ll harden yourself so you’ll never hope for anything at all.
4. Or fourthly, you can blame the theory of reality and you can say if there’s nothing in this world that ever is Rachel, then Rachel must be beyond this world. If there’s nothing in this world that will ever satisfy me, then it means that I am made for something beyond this world.

Now there are only four possible responses. Which one is it going to be?

1. One makes you a fool.
2. One makes you a self-hater.
3. One makes you an utterly hard cynic.
4. And one makes you a Christian.

I know Leah.

Some days I go to bed early. I do it only to end the day in hopes that the new day coming will be better, now that I’ve made some change in life, or met a person. But, in the morning, Leah.

The core unrest still remains.

The new purchase, the date, the new job, the new experience — at their very best, they had a moment of new. At their very best, that’s all they had. The wedding party has to end and the decision on who does laundry has to begin. The vacation photos begin to bore even you. The new job has the same people problems, only with different names.

The core unrest still remains, poking through the fog as it dissipates in the rising sun. Leah.

Nobody wants Leah. She’s the ugly truth. She’s no longer hidden in the dark that disguised her as Rachel. Like Keller said, we can keep going after Rachel, but Rachel wasn’t meant for this earth. In the morning, it’s always Leah.

What’s interesting is that Lewis said all that in a chapter on hope. Not despair, but hope. Leah may be reality on this earth, but Rachel is the hope.