Afterthoughts

by David Gentiles

Our connection this week came through examining the story of a Hebrew wife named Hannah. Hannah suffered the social and personal indignity for years of being childless in a culture that assigned women worth almost exclusively on their ability to give their husbands children, and preferably male chldren. Her kindly, but mostly clueless husband, Elkanah, didn't understand, and even though he was kind and compassionate toward Hannah he did hedge his bets and secure another baby-making wife, who heaped indignity upon indignity at Hannah by constantly reminding her that she was a failure as a woman. Hannah took her plight to God day after day, year after year until one trip to the temple when her passionate, agonizing prayer caused the priest Eli to think she had been hitting the wine cask hard very early in the day. Assuring him of her sobriety, and sharing her story, Eli shifts out of judge into pastorly role and assues her that God has heard her prayer. She leaves uplifted, solely on the basis of this affirmation and a boy child, that she names Samuel, is born to her and Elkanah. Part of her plea bargain with God had included the promise to give the miracle child back to God, and the appropriate weaning period, Hannah journeys back to the temple and leaves the young boy with Eli to assist him in his priestly duties. The scripture also says that in addition to Samuel, God blessed Hannah with five more children.

During children's time we talked about how our parents and God deal with our requests. There are somethings they will provide for us whether we ask them for it specifically or not. I feed and clothe and shelter my children without them having to come and make a request from me. There are some things that it makes no difference how many times my children ask for it...I don't think it is good for them, so I'm not going to give it to them. God is like that as well. However, there are some things that I am ready to give my children, but I am waiting for them to ask me. They may receive it immediately, or they may have to wait until I think the time is right, but I am going to grant their request. Hannah asked for what she wanted. For whatever reason, God waited to grant that request. I love Hannah's faith and her deep confidence that in spite of the facts in front of her, God would grant her request. I do know however, women who pray for a child throughout their bearing years, and they are not able to have children. Some of them have said that God answered their prayer in a different way through adoption or in a job or ministry where they became a mother and mentor to others' children, but it doesn't change the fact that they didn't get their prayer answered in the way they wanted it answered. In a total God thing moment, Rachal Caron, a mom who just lost her son to cancer shortly after his high school graduation, was in the late service and in addition to thanking Journey for praying for her family and supporting them during Ryan's fight to live and eventual death, she and I talked about the blessing her son was and the way her prayers were answered, or not answered during his illness. I have a friend who was pronounced dead at the scene of an automobile accident, crushed in a small vehicle thast was mangled by a semi -tractor/trailer. He survived miraculously and says that prayer was the key...that he was "brought back by popular demand". It is a great story, but it needs to be set side by side with Ryan Caron's story who was prayed for by thousands of people as well, over the course of several years, and Ryan didn't recover.

So what is the point of the Hannah story? Not that every time we pray we get what we want. Hannah didn't get what she prayed for until years after she first began to petition God. But she did get an answer, and she kept praying, because she believed that God could be trusted with the desires of her heart, with her pain and discouragement, and with her deep faith and hope for her to be useful to the world. And oh...what a gift to the world Samuel was...we talk about him next week.

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