1Sa 2:2 There is none holy as the LORD: for there isnone beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God.
Chapter 2:1-10 is the prayer of Hannah after she had given Samuel to the Lord. I selected today's verse because it is the one verse that sums up the prayer of 2:1-10 best and shows us the benefits of barrenness. In Chapter One her barrenness was a source of great pain, and yet 1:5 tells us it was the LORD that had shut up her womb. Sometimes God’s providence brings us through barren seasons. During this time the enemy takes their opportunity to afflict her; “her adversary also provoked her sore, for to make her fret, because the LORD had shut up her womb.” We know from the scriptures that this was not a season that passed quickly but “year by year, when she went up to the house of the LORD, so she provoked her; therefore she wept, and did not eat.” This was not Hannah overreacting but the pressure of their provocation and the barrens that haunted her year by year had brought her to the end of herself.
She is so sorrowful that she fails to even produce words in her prayer in chapter one. So bent out of shape that Eli supposes that she is drunk. We pause and ask ourselves in these seasons why a good God can allow such injustices. Why do the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper? A million questions that usually never seemed to be answered at that moment. We find for Hannah it was at least a few years later before she seemed to get any peace about her situation or understanding about who God is.
In chapter one her prayer was poured out of a heart that was crushed and it was such a broken prayer that God is the only one who knows the entirety of what she said but chapter 2’s prayer reads like a psalm, it comes from a heart that has been instructed. It shows us that God had revealed something about himself to her through this whole ordeal. Like David learned about God in the cave, Hannah learned about God in the barren years of her life. These barren years were revealing things about her God that she would not have known otherwise. Not just the barren season but the years between her prayer being answered and the prayer of chapter 2, they must have been years of meditating upon the goodness of the Lord, the faithfulness of the Lord, His power and ability, all these themes can be found in this prayer of hers. All the seasons of life were being woven together like one harmonic chorus that sings the Glory of God and his goodness to his people.
We see in this prayer the realization of verses like Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” And Romans 11:36 “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.” It is one thing to know these verses but quite another to realize them, for them to become a living reality. Knowing can be done in a day, but realizing these truths is the work of years, season of barrenness and fruitfulness are woven together over the course of years before we realize that It was The LORD that closed up our wombs, and It was the Lord who opened our wombs. It was the Goodness of God in my seasons of loss and his goodness in my seasons of triumph. The coming and going of all his providential seasons work together to bring us to a place where will know and exclaim “There is none holy as the LORD: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God.”
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