Leah's Children And Everyone Else

I firmly believe there are 12 different kinds of people. 4 aspects of humanity that have different variations. I don't think of this very much nor do I categorize different individuals and give them labels. I do however review this idea from time to time because I think it is good to keep in mind that although mankind has shared needs they also have different ways of processing their experiences.

These 12 types of people are characterized by Jacob's 12 children that became (in one form or another) the 12 Hebrew tribes. The family of Messiah was a family that represented all of humanity.

This morning I was looking at the uneven distribution of children in Jacob's family.
- Leah has 6 sons and 1 daughter.
- Zilpah had 2 sons, Bilah had 2 sons and Rachael had 2 sons.
So 6 tribes came from one mother and the other 6 were split between 3 mothers.

In my mind even though there are 12 types of people out there things are not broken out evenly. The majority of Jacob's sons came from Leah and the Bible describes her as a plump, happy and kind of passive baby making kind of person. She wasn't strikingly beautiful. She got a little competitive with her sister Rachael for a season but for the most part, she was a Godly content person and she wasn't out to change the world. The world is filled with Leahs and most of humanity is also. Messiah came from her line. Jesus is descended from Leah.

But then there are the other 6 children they are different. They have the same needs but they have different mothers. They are minorities in the way they think and relate. Every one of us is unique and special but we all know people that are just out there don't we? They are just coming at things from a different direction.

Why am I talking about this? Maybe just because I want to remind myself that we all have different perspectives. Jesus held the title, 'Son of Man' because he represented all of humanity fully. People who study personalities are baffled by the accounts of Him because He manifests the aspects of each known personality type. He was a unique sinless man. He was the second Adam and all of the genetics of all mankind came from the first one. He was the 'finger of God'. God himself taking on human form like a person who puts his finger into a glass of water. That finger enters that realm and God entered our realm of time and space in His incarnation.

We each are 1 of those 12 variants but in Christ each one of us can minister to all 12. He can minister through us. No matter how different or the same we are He Is our common ground. He levels the playing field even if it seems like there is an overwhelming weight on one side slanting everything one way.

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Us And Them

'There are two types of people. Those who break everything into two types and those who don't.' -Unknown

I firmly believe there is only one type of person. Us. But there are polarizing forces and roads fork to go into different directions. The Bible gives us twelves tribes to examine in the Hebrew scriptures and they show us twelve personalities each derived from one of the twelve sons of Jacob. All the sons had one father but there were two different wives:

- Leah (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah and later Issachar and Zebulun)
- Rachel (Joseph and she died after giving birth to Benjamin)

But the competition between the women to have children caused the wive's servants to get into the mix (and you think your family is strange).

- Bilhah, Rachel's servant, (Dan and Naphtali)
- Zilpah, Leah's servant (Gad and Asher)

The house was a two party system... team Leah and team Rachel. This verse gives a foundation for their relationship to Jacob.

"Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favoured." - Genesis 29:17 KJV

Kind and matronly versus va va va voom.

Human beings seem to gravitate towards party systems. Us and them. These and those. God gave a blanket promise that applied to all of Jacob's children.

"That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;" - Genesis 22:17 KJV

"And the LORD appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham's sake." - Genesis 26:24 KJV

Don't get me wrong. If I must label myself I would say that I am an evangelical. I believe in two eternal destinations. Heaven and Hell. You are either on the ark or in the flood. Up or down. I just don't believe that the people in the ark are different then the people outside of it. The thing that separates them is a choice.

When I am tempted to say, 'them' I check myself. We might have different mothers but every personality has the same father. I have an ark to run to and I want to be a person who runs out and brings people to the the only person who saves. There are no polarizing forces inside that boat everyone in there is riding out the storm with hope that they are all going to make it to the other side.

If I want to to understand and relate to a person then I must understand who their mother is. Knowing the forces that formed a person is part of caring for them but it doesn't stop there. Everyone who chooses Christ has a birth that completes them as a person.

Ultimately the seed of Abraham that was blessed is Jesus. Jesus brought blessing to that whole house retroactively. Jesus does the same for us... and them.

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