Week 14 I Samuel
Whatever life Hannah lived before marriage, it didn’t improve much after. Her biggest hope was to have kids, and when that didn’t work out the other wife badgered and mocked and goaded her. Hannah gradually discovered that one of the cruel places in the world can be right there at home.
Years passed and she might have tried different ways to cope with her dispiriting life. Eventually she turned to the Lord. If prayer wasn’t the only thing she tried, it’s only the prayer that’s reported.
Hannah’s prayer was a vow-prayer. Please, please, please Lord let me have a child and if you answer my prayer, then I’ll give the child back to you (the if and the then are right there in verse eleven). It was a hazardous prayer, with a potential risk down the road. The Lord did the if and gave her a son. And Hannah, just as she promised did the then.
Hannah is a really impressive person. It might have been tempting for her to forget about the then. But she took on the regret that came with the reward.
I guess that early on the biggest love and deepest devotion Hannah could have imagined was for her boy.
But as you read her second prayer in chapter two you get the impression that at some point she discovered someone deeper than her deepest.
Note: the Hannah story is in I Samuel 1.