Prayer that Empowers
Our devo’s often continue the musings from Sunday sermons, but we are experimenting with weekly opportunities to listen along to the Scripture our children are exploring in Kid Min. Someone somewhere once said something about the value of a child-like faith, after all! (Yup, Jesus in Matt. 18.) Of course, we may also - as adults - explore some grittier layers.
The story of Hannah, which opens the book of 1 Samuel, often resonates deeply with people struggling with the pain of infertility. Hannah wants a child with all her heart, but month after month, year after year - no baby.
What may be less obvious to us is how horribly unkind - even abusive - those around her are as she struggles. Her husband guilts Hannah and centers himself, suggesting if she really loved and valued him, she wouldn’t be so sad about not having children. Then when he brings in a second wife to bear children for him instead, he ignores the horrible way she treats Hannah, driving her often to tears and the inability to eat. (The Bible uses a word to describe the two wives’ relationship usually used to describe nations at war, not people!) Even a religious leader, Eli, who sees Hannah’s wild tears as she’s praying one day in the house of the LORD, corrects her harshly; he mistakenly assumes she must be drunk.
Up until this moment, Hannah seems to have been powerless and stuck - in harmful relationships, in her own tender yet untended emotions. But now something shifts. Because in response to Eli, this voice of spiritual authority, Hannah does not cower - she pushes back. She speaks up for herself at last.
15 “Not so, my lord,” Hannah replied, “I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. 16 Do not take your servant for a wicked woman; I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief.”
One commentator puts it this way: “Though no outward situation changed, Hannah changed, transformed as she shifted her attention from being powerless to an active agent who honestly laid her oppression before God. [bolding added] When she returned to her family, she was not the same person who left.” (Kimberly Dickson) As Hannah practiced sharing her full self in prayer with God, she began to relate differently, more freely and boldly, with others around her as well.
How might it change our prayer life if we thought of it as an opportunity for empowerment? If we recognize our honesty with God as a way to exercise our agency, as well as build intimacy between us? Are we willing to claim the whole of ourselves in the safety of God’s presence - our joy, our anger, our pain?
Talk about these things with Jesus for a few minutes. Perhaps you, like Hannah, have something you need to tell God today as a way of speaking up for yourself at last. Perhaps today is the day.