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Read: 1 Samuel 1:1-18
When did you last cry to God out of the depths? In the wake of a loved one's death... in the midst of an embittered estrangement... in the pain of illness or disease... in your own doubting of God's goodness, triggered by some terrible event?
Sometimes the church does a disservice by leaving the impression that lament or protest represents bad faith on our part and, therefore, does not belong in our prayers or devotions or corporate worship. It's better to purse our lips, suffer in silence, and keep our questions - not to mention anger - to ourselves.
But God knows the human heart from the inside. Flight from God, physical or spiritual, is folly (Psalm 139:7-12). Seeking God with what resides deep within us coupled with the depths into which we have fallen provides the difficult but redemptive course. We act in trust when we bring before God the whole of our lives, not just what we think would please (or at least not offend) God.
When Hannah presents herself before the Lord at the shrine in Shiloh, she comes weighed down with extraordinary baggage. In a culture that views fertility as God's blessing, Hannah remains barren. To exacerbate the situation, her husband's other wife Peninnah not only has sons and daughters, but Peninnah "used to provoke [Hannah] severely, to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb" (1:6).
Hannah prays to God in deep distress, a Hebrew phrase that the King James Version renders as "bitterness of soul." One might assume that bitterness would counsel Hannah against prayer, waiting until her feelings are less severe. Or one might presume bitterness would only lash out against God. After all, the text does intimate twice (1:5, 6) that God stands as the cause for Hannah's barrenness.
Without masking her bitterness (the text adds that she "wept bitterly"), Hannah prays - in and of itself a remarkable act of trust. Yet the substance of her prayer may exceed even her act of faith in praying. For Hannah accompanies her prayer for a child with a pledge to return the child to God as a nazirite, one consecrated to God. Hannah entrusts herself to God, the source of life. If that trust issues in a child, Hannah vows to entrust that gift of life back into God's hands and purposes....
The testing of her trust does not take long. The priest Eli, charged with oversight of the Shiloh shrine, misunderstands her. Not hearing the words, he takes her mouthing of a silent prayer as evidence of drunkenness. Hannah, as in her prayer to God, does not hide her distress from Eli. Without disclosing the particulars, she declares she has been "pouring out my soul before the Lord." Eli's benediction that God grant her petition closes the encounter with the hope that Hannah will be heard.
Does the disappearance of Hannah's sadness in verse 18 come from the confidence aroused by Eli's affirmation or from the emotional release of pouring out her soul in prayer or from the calm generated by her trusting enough in God to pray - or do all three explanations really point to the same core truth? Out of bitterness, out of the very depth of her spirit and situation, Hannah takes a leap of faith: She trust God.
For Meditation This Day
God, when I feel I cannot possibly pray, help me to pray. When it seems I cannot possibly trust, help me to trust - in you.
by John Indermark, in "Neglected Voices: Biblical Spirituality in the Margins"
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