Hannah suffered for years with the pain of childlessness. It was so hard, everyone else seemed to be having babies, and then there were the insensitive comments by others. There was no anniversary to grieve, but a continual emptiness. What made it even harder was that her husband had taken a second wife and she didn’t have any problems reproducing. Year after year Peninnah would provoke Hannah, saying things like “the Lord mustn’t love you Hannah, perhaps you’ve done something wrong, maybe if you just confess your sin…”
Her husband loved her, but he didn’t seem to understand her pain, he gave her more food as if that would make up for it! (1 Samuel 1:5). Perhaps this just made Peninnah provoke her all the more.
Hannah felt so rough that she couldn’t even eat. But she did the right thing, she poured out her heart to the one who heard her, to the one who cared for her. Like psalmist in today’s Psalm, she was heard.
It’s amazing that at the end of 1 Samuel 1 we are told that her face was no longer sad (v18). She still had no baby, nor even a pregnancy, but she knew the Lord had heard her, and that was enough. She could trust that He would do what would be best for her.
Like Ruth yesterday, and like many of the childless women in Scripture, God had an overflow answer for her. She would bear a son, and he would have a unique role in salvation history, he would anoint the first king of Israel.
It is a wonderful thing to know that you can cry out to the Lord in your distress, and to know that if you belong to Jesus, you will be heard, and know that He will only give you what is best for you even when that answer is “no”. He gives us what we would have asked for if we had known all that he knows. When our son was born, we prayed that he would not have Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, but the Lord knew what was best, he has given us a thorn in the flesh, but His grace continues to be sufficient for us, and we know that He’s given us what is best for us.
Light and Momentary Troubles 
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