Hannah 3

“O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.” 

1 Samuel 1:11, ESV

If you haven’t been through it, you’ve seen it: the years and years and years and yeeeaaars of waiting in desperate prayer, of thing after thing, of no breakthrough, no answer. When the good desires of our  hearts for basic things--health, family, provision--seem to fall on deaf ears.

Hannah knows that pain, too. Year after year….

But in the crucible, her heart had grown larger. It is tempting to let our heart center and shrink around that one thing, around ourselves, or in the protection against a world that has seemed to rob you of all. It is tempting--especially in our culture--to let our prayers be selfish.

Yet her prayer in the peak of pain was actually a prayer that would cost her dearly, a prayer of sacrifice to herself: for a son, but not a son for her, but a son for the Lord. In the great depravity of Israel, in the famine of the word of the Lord, when even in the tent of meeting (this was pre-temple) there was no regard for the King of kings, she prayed that there would be one faithful servant in the tent of meeting. Would one, one person stand up as the Lord’s man? And would that be her son? Beyond herself, her prayer was more for the Lord than for a son for herself. For she could not have remained unawares of the crushing agony that would come as she left her little son. She had seen the curly hair and big black eyes of Peninah’s children. She had heard their tears--and in her son, those tears would tear through her heart as she left him. And not left in a pious little Jewish school, but in a temple filled with sexual promiscuity on its very premises (1 Sa. 2:22), with men who had no regard for the Lord or propriety, with selfishness, greed. Even the high priest, Eli, whom she would leave him with was a man who was compromised, unable to recognize spiritual fervency in Hannah when he saw it, who would not stand up before his sons, and indeed honored them above the Lord (1 Sam. 2:29). Perhaps (as Wallace, 2002 speculates) Peninah would hold this against her too--what kind of mother would do such a thing?

A mother who was not selfish, but moved by the Spirit, truly put the Lord’s glory first. The Lord’s firstborn son of Israel was astray, and her firstborn son would be the sacrifice to bring them back.

Prayer is meant for sacrifice. It is our prayer that rises as an incense (Rev. 8:4). It is a burnt offering. What grace our Lord has with our tiny prayers!!! What mercy he has with our selfish prayers! Not that we are not to pray for provision, for food, for new houses, guidance, family. He as Father delights in those too. But do we stop?

Our needs, our stories are part of a bigger story. Pray both. Do not let “Your kingdom come” be eclipsed by “my kingdom come.”  We have a God who himself has given us the promise:

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Matthew 6:33