Tags
1 Samuel 2:8, Change, Fear, Hannah, Judges 21:25, Samuel, Uncertainty
Day 9: Monday in the second week of Lent
1 Samuel 2:8
The pillars of the earth are the LORD’s,
and on them he has set the world.
Reflection
We are not the first people to live in times of great change. Indeed, we hear very little in scripture about those ordinary years when the cycle of the seasons flows smoothly, the fields yield their abundance, and no enemies harass the nation. What we hear are the times of challenge and crisis. Joel writes of a plague of locusts. The prophets speak of the idolatries and injustice that lead to catastrophic political events. The accounts in Joshua and Judges picture a people stumbling from one crisis to another with only brief mentions of the intervening years of peace. God speaks most when the nation swerves off course – like the passenger who cries out only when the driver drifts across the line or fails to see a stoplight.
The song of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2 arises out of a dark personal time when her barrenness has led to personal anguish and taunting. Though beloved by her husband, her childlessness meant not only taunting and abuse by her husband’s second wife, but a very real vulnerability since a son was a woman’s safety net. A son would defend and provide should anything happen to her husband.
Hannah’s distress mirrored the distress in society. It was a time when the future seemed lost. Judges ends with dark tales of violence and a note of despair at the moral poverty and social conflict of their time: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” (Judges 21:25)
But then the biblical narrative turns to Hannah, and from her sorrow comes the child who will be the prophet Samuel and a new beginning for the nation. Her song of joy and gratefulness describes God’s care for the vulnerable, God’s righting of the world, and confesses again the world’s solid foundation: “The pillars of the earth are the LORD’s.”
It is a word worth remembering when life is shaken, when dangers lurk, and fear whispers in the dark.
Gracious and ever-present God,
whose mercy knows no bounds,
and whose arms are ever open to your world:
Grant us new birth as your children
And make us joyful in your service.
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Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zion_angels_landing_view.jpg Diliff / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)