When have you wanted God to act so bad you were willing to make an unthinkable bargain?
We all, especially this week, are reminded how often folks we know and love have prayed, asked God for a miracle, a miracle that didn’t come. They and we are devastated, that a God we believe knows us and loves us leaves us out in the cold, struggling and suffering in sometimes just horrible circumstances
It is easy in situations like these to lose your faith!
You may believe God is there, that God is even listening, but that God for reasons you certainly don’t understand doesn’t answer, or answer in a way you can live with.
We all know the story of Jesus death, of his time in the garden weighed down by the sins of the world, suffering cruel and heartless punishment while innocent, and then dying a tortured death, mocked, and for the most part forsaken.
We know, we believe that God understands our pain, and that God has taken on that pain at Calvary, but…
I remember years ago seeing the picture of a young woman with the word “forsaken” tattooed on her cheek. I’m pretty sure the photo was from a movie or a video game, not a real situation. But, and I don’t know why, that shocked me and made me cold and angry, because while I knew it wasn’t real, I know that is very many places.
People are rejected, labeled, set apart, left to suffer and struggle and die.
It doesn’t help when we think of people jumping from the towers in NYC to their deaths, or when we think of our dearest loved ones suffering with diseases and illnesses and random shootings and tragic accidents.
And we ask, where is God?
And while it might appear that Hannah’s ask was not one that was produced by the same kind of suffering, in Hannah’s mind it was.
God had forsaken her, left her to be mocked by her husband’s “other” wife and her children.
We can argue that Hannah’s childlessness was not like being locked in a cage and forgotten as has happened again and again in history. Not like being left to hand on a cross, or dying in a plane that you know is going down into a field or into a building.
But the sense of abandonment – that is just as real. “I have failed, and for reasons I cannot imagine, I have been forsaken!”
For Hannah, having a child was everything. She joins te women of scripture who also wished for a child, and the missions of women who once hoped, but whose hopes were dashed, by circumstances beyond their control, betrayed by a body that wouldn’t, couldn’t, and didn’t.
Hannah without any knowledge on her part, represents a community of those who hope, but who see hope evaporating.
That is, until for reasons know only by God, she in a moment of anguish and pain chooses to pour her heart out to God once again in the Holy Tabernacle, and God answers.
Elkanah was a good man, who tried his best.
He was a product of his time, living in a world where what mattered was progeny, where more children were better, and where a wife who could not have a child could be divorced and another added who could have children.
He loved Hannah.
But children were everything. Inheritance was everything. Progeny were your wealth. And Hannah couldn’t. He wanted to spend his life with her, she meant everything to him. But…
So, Hannah went and asked. She poured out her heart before God. She wept. She argued with God, the God who had denied her.
She must have know the chances of a child were very slim. She had no knowledge of the gynecology we know now, about all the parts in the right places, and about fertilization and egg attachment, and of all the things on the inside that can go wrong.
But she had not conceived, and she was unwilling to give up asking!
Jesus tells a story about widow who continues to harangue a corrupt judge until he gives her what she wants and needs. Persistence in prayer. One wonders if Jesus had Hannah in mind.
“Ask,” Jesus says. “Seek”. “Knock”. Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Keep your prayers arising. Because…
There is a bit of comedy in this scene, and you might have missed it.
Eli, the high priest at the Tabernacle is an awful high priest. He let’s his sons run rampant through Israel, doing awful things. And then he sits in judgement on Hannah.
At least until diminutive and deferential Hannah gets up in his grill and lets him know a thing or two about faithfulness.
Do not! I repeat, do not mess with a woman sharing the agony of her soul with God unless you want a good whooping!
And Eli, chastened, speaks God’s blessing on Hannah, “You may go home now and stop worrying. I’m sure the God of Israel will answer your prayer.”
Hannah asked big! She believed. She struggled. And she suffered.
And then, and only then, God answered.
Then Hannah did the unthinkable.
She returned her blessing to the Lord who had blessed her.
And she brought Samuel back to the very same tabernacle after he had been weaned, to live in the presence of the Lord his whole life.
What is it you need to be talking to the Lord about?
What is your big ask?
For understanding? For clarity? For blessing? For purpose?
Ask. Seek. Knock. The God of Israel will answer your prayer.
Amen!
God had forsaken her, left her to be mocked by her husband’s “other” wife and her children.
We can argue that Hannah’s childlessness was not like being locked in a cage and forgotten as has happened again and again in history. Not like being left to hand on a cross, or dying in a plane that you know is going down into a field or into a building.
But the sense of abandonment – that is just as real. “I have failed, and for reasons I cannot imagine, I have been forsaken!”
For Hannah, having a child was everything. She joins te women of scripture who also wished for a child, and the missions of women who once hoped, but whose hopes were dashed, by circumstances beyond their control, betrayed by a body that wouldn’t, couldn’t, and didn’t.
Hannah without any knowledge on her part, represents a community of those who hope, but who see hope evaporating.
That is, until for reasons know only by God, she in a moment of anguish and pain chooses to pour her heart out to God once again in the Holy Tabernacle, and God answers.
Elkanah was a good man, who tried his best.
He was a product of his time, living in a world where what mattered was progeny, where more children were better, and where a wife who could not have a child could be divorced and another added who could have children.
He loved Hannah.
But children were everything. Inheritance was everything. Progeny were your wealth. And Hannah couldn’t. He wanted to spend his life with her, she meant everything to him. But…
So, Hannah went and asked. She poured out her heart before God. She wept. She argued with God, the God who had denied her.
She must have know the chances of a child were very slim. She had no knowledge of the gynecology we know now, about all the parts in the right places, and about fertilization and egg attachment, and of all the things on the inside that can go wrong.
But she had not conceived, and she was unwilling to give up asking!
Jesus tells a story about widow who continues to harangue a corrupt judge until he gives her what she wants and needs. Persistence in prayer. One wonders if Jesus had Hannah in mind.
“Ask,” Jesus says. “Seek”. “Knock”. Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Keep your prayers arising. Because…
There is a bit of comedy in this scene, and you might have missed it.
Eli, the high priest at the Tabernacle is an awful high priest. He let’s his sons run rampant through Israel, doing awful things. And then he sits in judgement on Hannah.
At least until diminutive and deferential Hannah gets up in his grill and lets him know a thing or two about faithfulness.
Do not! I repeat, do not mess with a woman sharing the agony of her soul with God unless you want a good whooping!
And Eli, chastened, speaks God’s blessing on Hannah, “You may go home now and stop worrying. I’m sure the God of Israel will answer your prayer.”
Hannah asked big! She believed. She struggled. And she suffered.
And then, and only then, God answered.
Then Hannah did the unthinkable.
She returned her blessing to the Lord who had blessed her.
And she brought Samuel back to the very same tabernacle after he had been weaned, to live in the presence of the Lord his whole life.
What is it you need to be talking to the Lord about?
What is your big ask?
For understanding? For clarity? For blessing? For purpose?
Ask. Seek. Knock. The God of Israel will answer your prayer.
Amen!
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