1 Samuel 2:11-10
Sermon
I remember speaking to a gentleman once who was telling me how as a child he had been paddling in the sea and had been pulled out by a rip tide. One minute he was in the sea up to his waist the next he was being bashed against the rocks. He described being dragged under again and again and feeling a real sense of utter helplessness and fear that he was going to die. He was saved by his uncle and his mother who had swum out to save him.
I don’t often feel that I’m ever in control. Anyone else feel like that? Sometimes Life just seems to push us around and we feel like we are just trapped in a current and there is nothing we can do. Anyone else have days like that?
The Biblical reading today is a prayer of Hannah and the background is that Hannah was unable to have children. Every year Hannah and her husband would go up to the Tabernacle to offer a sacrifice (The Tabernacle was a tent that the early Israelites used for worship. It was replaced by the Temple.) and in the previous chapter we see Hannah praying and Eli the Priest telling her off for thinking she was drunk. But in an answer to her prayers, Hannah gets pregnant, has a son Samuel and in keeping with her promise to God when Samuel was old enough she sent him to serve in the Tabernacle. And the prayer we read today was the prayer she said having left Samuel behind at Shiloh where the Tabernacle was.
It an interesting prayer. It’s full of how Hannah sees God is fully in control and in some respects, there is nothing we can do. It’s a prayer about the sovereignty of God and how we have little control over what is happening because God is sovereign. This prayer is a brutal reminder that God does as God wishes, without our consent or our approval. And that for us is a difficult lesson to hear. It’s hard to think that things happen that are outside our control. It difficult being the victim if we want to use that word. It’s difficult being the person stuck in the riptide. But that depends on our point of view. Are you a victim?
Because in and amongst this loss of control for Hannah is a sure hope that everything God does he does for the good of those who need it. And that for me is an amazing thing. That behind everything that we see happening around us God is working to bring about his will and purpose.
Sometimes life can be so overwhelming. Those waves that keep crashing you against the rocks. Those bills that keep coming. Those feelings that tell you that you’re rubbish and a failure. That sense that all we know is going down the tubes. All of the things can seem to swamp us and make us feel like we are facing a very uncertain future. But here is the Good news from today’s reading. God is in control. There is a wonderful old Muslim story of a man who refused to buy a rug because it was an absolute mess. That was until the rug maker pointed out that he was looking at the back of it. Earlier I showed our young people some optical illusions. It was a reminder that the way we see the world is important. We can rail against the injustice of a God that seems to be working in a way that is contrary to the way we see the world. Or we can rejoice that God is working to change the world. The choice is yours but one thing we can’t do is stop God working.
Amen.
