Monday, September 29, 2008

elkanah and hannah

don't worry, elkanah is not a name consideration. but if it is your name, i would like to say, it is quite swell, indeed.

today i have been thinking about suffering and longing. they are usually linked. perhaps they are always linked, since one surely always longs for deliverance from suffering. even if they long for it, appropriately, secondly to God Himself. i have a couple of friends who are enduring specific suffering right now. reading in the good book today i came across the story of hannah and samuel. and we all know she desperately wanted a baby and she was known to be infertile. but today i was reminded of an element i don't usually think of in this story. i actually recall it being in the rare jewel, so credit goes to jeremiah burroughs for alerting me to this parallel.

hannah is so upset that she can't eat because of how badly she wants a child. i love her husband, elkanah's response. and i picture him kindly saying it to her, with love and compassion, but compelling her to remember what she has already. he says, "am i not more to you than ten sons?" simple, but good. that is what God says to us in suffering. am i not more to you than...(insert your type of deliverance here). now, ten sons would be more than she could ask or imagine, we would think. but really God is more than more than we could ask or imagine. and what He has for us now is good, pleasing, and perfect. it is perhaps not deliverance from the death of a loved one, the unending financial frustration, the dissatisfaction with our body, that relationship that just never seems to heal, etc. but what He has is, for His beloved, his true sons and daughters, always deliverance from self, from indwelling sin, from ultimate hardheartedness that would keep us from the wedding feast of the Lamb. and always, Christ is near the broken-hearted. our deliverance is always unto Him, He is the reward be it in the form of a fattened calf in joyful celebration or a foreign bread raining down to a complaining people in the dregs of suffering.

God is good all the time. we believe; Lord, help our unbelief.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

well said. thanks to jeremiah burroughs for his insight and thanks to you, court, for posting.

2:08 PM  
Blogger Kara said...

amen.

8:45 PM  

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