Has there ever been a time in your life when you felt like you reached the bottom? Are you there right now? Maybe it’s financial issues. Maybe it’s family issues. Maybe it’s children issues. Maybe it’s job issues. Maybe it’s past issues that keep coming back to the present. Maybe it’s anxiety about the future. Maybe you’re there, but you don’t realize it yet… Maybe it’s… Maybe it’s…
The reality is, we have all (or will at some point) reach a place of discouragement, devastation, or disillusionment relationally, personally, or just in general. It could come from the loss of a job, the loss of a friend, the loss of a child, the inability to have a child, a difficult job situation, and on and on. And the troubling thing is, most know that this world doesn’t meet needs, but its constant cry, “…sufficient to meet needs…sufficient to meet needs…” is believed; and then we wrestle with wondering why things happen the way they do. Why did this guy or this girl get this or get that? Why did this family receive this blessing or that benefit, all the while we’re stuck here with this or that? Why do they have such a good marriage, and why do their kids behave so well, while we’re here with issue after dog-pile issue? You’ve been there, and if you haven’t you will be at some point.
This world is broken, and is full of the unexplained. There are times when red lights seem to hit in what appears to be a concert at just the wrong time. There are other times when the other driver got distracted for just the right millisecond at just the right time, and then BAM! you’re hit from behind. Or, for whatever reason, your dishwasher goes out or mice want to make a home in your kitchen cabinet and you have to pull everything out and deep clean when you certainly had all the time in the world to do just that. The list goes on and on doesn’t it? But what about when things hit closer to the heart? Your child is born, but they have a disability? You’re daughter rejects her so-called faith and finds herself 4-months pregnant? You get a call from the police officer who somberly tells you that your son has just died in a car accident? What about the vacation that was supposed to be the “big one” for all the family to reconnect and rebuild tense relationships, only to have your daughter in a freak accident have her spine severed as she made her way down the ski slope? What about when your mother or your father no longer remember you, and you have to care for them as you would your 1-year child–changing diapers, bathing, and feeding?
Are these examples too extreme? Perhaps you can’t relate to any of them? But, what about when your marriage is so cold that you’ve just become roommates? Or the extreme…your spouse leaves you for another man or woman? What about when your closest relative is caught in a same-sex relationship? What about when your best friend says that they are suffering from gender dysphoria and feel that they are trapped inside their body and need to have a procedure to transition their gender to what they truly believe they are? What about when you can’t sleep at night because all you keep thinking about is a girlfriend or boyfriend from the past? You wonder, day-after-day, did I marry the right person? And so, you live your life caught in a dream-world of discontentment, and as a result your family suffers from your chronic bad attitude. What about the stroke or the seizure that hits you out of nowhere and your left paralyzed in the majority of your body? Or the doctor comes in after your physical and informs you that you have cancer or type 2 diabetes or early on-set alzheimer’s? What about when you’re so successful materially, but when you think about it these so-called friends are only after one thing–your possessions? We could discuss example after example and situation after situation, but the bigger questions remain:
- What do you do when these things happen…when they’re chronic and simply won’t go away? How do you respond?
- Better yet, how should you respond?
Take a look at one woman’s response to the year-after-year provoking of her husband’s second wife regarding the fact that she had a barren womb:
“…I have poured out my soul before the Lord...”
1 Samuel 1:15b
This story comes on the heels of the period of Judges–the ~250 year period of Israel’s cycle of idolatry and confession–and introduces us to a new era in the history of the fledgling Israel nation. The land promised to Abraham and his descendants had been, for the most part already conquered, but the Israel people were finding themselves constantly either being wooed into the Gentile’s worship of false gods or subjugated and having to serve the Gentiles as vassals. It is at the end of this period that God introduces us to this woman’s story. He knows her need, and we see how His love for His people is reflected in profound glory!
She is desperate, suffering from the jeering of her husband’s other wife for not being able to bear a child, and she has reached the end of her rope. She has bottomed out, and she turns to the only answer in her dark night of the soul. She turns to the Lord, and it is to Him that she pours out…everything. Her request is wrought out of her desire to honor God, and she teaches several things, but two things stand out regarding the nature of our God:
- God is a God who is near, and He listens to the cries of His children…
- God is a God who is powerful, and He answers according to His will…
These profound attributes of our God should stir within us a desire to, like Hannah, pour out our souls to Him no matter where we find ourselves in life. Whether we are in a dark night of the soul or we are in what seems to be a comfortable place, we should all ask the question, “how am I responding to life’s brokenness?” O God, to You we come. Amen & Amen.
— August 19, 2016