God uses even our bad human relationships?

When Jacob said to his wives Rachel and Leah about their father Laban,

"I see that your father's attitude toward me is not what it was before ...

Your father has deceived me and changed my wages ten times" (Genesis 31:5, 7),

Rachel and Leah replied to Jacob, "We have no share in the inheritance from our father.

He has treated us like foreigners, selling us, and he has spent all the money he received for us.

All the wealth that God took away from our father now belongs to us and our children.

So do as God has instructed you" (vv. 14-16).

Looking at how Leah and Rachel, Laban's daughters, told their husband Jacob,

"He has treated us like foreigners, selling us, and he has spent all the money he received for us" (v. 15),

it seems that the relationship between the father and his daughters was not very good.

Feeling like they were treated as foreigners by their father and also thinking,

"He has spent all our money," Leah and Rachel might have felt even more distressed

upon hearing from their husband Jacob that their father Laban had deceived him

and changed his wages ten times.

Their feelings could have been a mixture of betrayal, frustration,

and perhaps a sense of being used and manipulated.

In the end, they said to Jacob, "Do as God has instructed you."

So, Jacob prepared to return to his father Isaac in the land of Canaan,

taking his wives, children, and all the possessions and livestock

he had acquired in Mesopotamia (vv. 16-17).

When considering how God sovereignly used even bad relationships

between Laban, Jacob, and Laban's daughters Leah and Rachel

to eventually lead Jacob back to the land of Canaan from Mesopotamia,

it reminds us that even our bad human relationships

can be used by God to fulfill His will and plans.