Psalm 113| 1 Sam 1: 1-20 | Rev 22: 10-21

Are you ready? Are all the presents bought, wrapped, and labelled? I am very conscious that for some with family abroad, that will have been done weeks ago. But I am sure some of us are still working on it all.

But leaving aside the presents you will buy and give; what about the presents you hope to receive? Is there something you really want, something you really really want? Have you dropped hints, or even said directly to your nearest and dearest – “please … I would love …”

We still have the letters our children wrote to Father Christmas and left out for him on the fireplace with the mince pie and carrot for the reindeer. I should perhaps confess that they were still writing them when they were 19 years old – by when their requests were for world peace and the end of poverty.

I guess for all of us there are things we long for, way beyond Christmas presents – things to do with our lives, our families, our circumstances, leaving aside those issues of world peace and the end of poverty.

Our OT lesson introduces us to Hannah who had one of those long-standing longings. Hannah really longed for a child. Not having one was really difficult for her, as it is for many others in her position.

It wasn’t even just the emptiness. Or even her sense that others were looking at her and looking down on her. Hannah was Elkanah’s first wife. And when after some time she had not had any children, he took a second wife, Penninah, who did bear him children, and it would seem she had many of them. You may be aware that polygamy was quite common in the OT society.

But we read that Elkanah loved Hannah. So when they went to make their sacrifices they would provide an animal to the priest, which would be killed and roasted on the fire, and they would be given portions back to eat themselves. And Elkanah used to give Hannah a double portion as an indication of his deep love for her. That wound Peninnah up big time. And she would mock and provoke Hannah really badly about her barrenness in order to irritate her quite deliberately. This went on year after year.

Hannah became increasingly sad. But Elkanah didn’t really get it. He didn’t understand the reality of her emptiness and sadness.

So there she was – despised by Penninah, misunderstood by Elkanah – and it went on year after year after year.

And so we come to another of the annual trips to Shiloh, where the ark of the covenant was kept in the Tent of Meeting.  It was the place for an annual celebration when everyone came together; it was probably the equivalent of our harvest festival. But the intentional gathering together of the family around a religious festival is perhaps more reminiscent of our family gatherings at Christmas. We come together, which can be an occasion that accentuates the pain that some of our families carry.

So it was with Hannah that this annual event again caused her great pain. Aware of all the family noise and happiness around her she just felt empty. So what do we read she did? We read that Hannah went to pray. When she was distressed and weeping bitterly, she poured out her heart to God. In one sense that seems counterintuitive. If God was responsible for her condition, surely God would be the last person she would go to, but Hannah did take her troubles to God. And so often with us God uses our troubles and trials to draw us towards himself.

So how does she pray? Her prayer mirrors the prayer of her people when they were slaves in Egypt – we can read about it in Exodus chapter 3, and we read there that God heard their cry and looked on their misery and came to intervene.

And this was now another significant moment in the history of God’s people. At the end of the preceding book, the book of Judges, we read there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. In due course God would give them a king and Samuel was to play a big role in the anointing of first Saul and then David. So the outcome of her prayer and God’s answer was to be very significant, although she had no idea of that.

But even as she prayed, she was misunderstood. Eli the priest did not get the depths of her spirituality; and that’s perhaps not surprising as he seems to have been generally rather slow on the uptake of things to do with God. However he does quickly recognise his mistake and gives her a blessing – wishing for her prayer, whatever it was, to be answered as she longs for.

And having poured out her heart in prayer she was comforted and no longer sad.

So, what was the prayer that had this effect? It was a prayer based in God’s generosity, goodness and grace. She recognised that everything comes for God and so everything we have belongs to him. We don’t know if this was her prayer year by year, but it was the place she had ultimately reached in her prayer.

And she promises that her son will be dedicated to God for the whole of his life. The custom at that time was for people to be dedicated as “Nazirites” wholly to God for several weeks or perhaps months. You can read about in Numbers ch 6. But Hannah was promising that any son God gave her would be devoted to God for his entire life.

Through her praying she was changed. Because prayer ultimately is about change within us rather than in our circumstances.

She still has this longing, but she understands that if it is answered, its fulfilment will belong to God, as its origin is in God.

And so it turned out to be. She did get what she longed for and she did give him back to God and she got much more as she had 3 more sons and 2 daughters.

But that is not the point. There was no hint in her prayer, or in her sense of answer, that she wanted or would ever have more than the one son. The point is that if everything we have is gift as it comes from God, it is always God’s.

As followers of Jesus Christ we are continually learning to hold everything we are and have in an open hand before God rather than possess it or cling to it.

I remember many years ago, we were in our first home with all our new stuff. Quite a lot was not new but it was special for us. And my late brother in law was staying with us and he was rather clumsy and one day we were sitting at the dining table and he was rocking backwards and forwards on his chair when there was an ominous cracking sound. He looked at us and aware of our sense of proud ownership of all this stuff he asked rather defensively and quizzically: “Jesus chair?”

Cecil Day Lewis has a well-known poem called “Walking Away”, and it is about parting from his son.

It concludes in this way:

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

Amen.