Time to Take Action

Have you ever been disappointed about something—oh, let’s say, a date that didn’t happen, or the fact that you’ve just turned 30 or 35 or 38 and you still don’t have a boyfriend—and you make the mistake of expressing your feelings to an unsympathetic person?

“I guess it wasn’t meant to be,” they say. “There’s other fish in the sea.” “Don’t worry, you’ll meet someone sooner or later.” “God has a plan.”

Well, all those things may be true—or not. The point is that when you’re hurting, most of the time the first step for healing isn’t to paste truth over the wound like a Band Aid. The first step is to tend to the broken place of the heart.

Hannah experienced this. After weeping and refusing to eat at the annual feast for the umpteenth year in a row, her husband Elkanah said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep…and why is your heart grieved? Am I not better to you than ten sons?” (1 Sam. 1:8)

I’m sure Elkanah was being kind and sensitive to his aching wife. He wanted his love to take away her pain (but note, it could not!). He may have spoken other things to her as well, other truth. But do you know how Hannah responded?

She got up, walked over to the tabernacle, and took her anguish to the Lord.

I don’t think she did this with an angry attitude toward Elkanah. In fact, I think his concern may be what made her realize that she needed to put an end to the pattern of self-pity. She had lived as an emotional victim of negative circumstances long enough. It was time to take action, and she needed to start with the only one who could truly understand and who could ultimately bring about change.

At the temple, Hannah encountered her heavenly Father’s heart. And when she finally left, she “went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad” (1 Sam 1:18).

My next few blogs focus on her time in the temple and what she found in the heart of God.