A Legacy of Faithfulness: The Prayers of Hannah

The calling of Samuel is the middle of the story; it is incomplete without the beginning or the end.

The boy Samuel answering the voice of God has grown from the infant Samuel born to the God-fearing, hymn-singing woman Hannah. The same boy who will grow into the prophet of Israel who anoints kings, whose legacy lives on even after his death.

This one important man may never have been born at all were it not for the faithful courage of his mother.

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Hannah, beloved wife who wants to be a loving mother, but is unable to bear children. Hannah who weeps and starves herself for the grief of her unmet desire and for the painful taunts of her husband’s second wife. Hannah who prays so fervently to God that the priest shames her for what he assumes is drunkenness.

She cannot even bring the words to her lips to beseech her God, so she prays in silence.

I can see her, wearied by the burden of her sorrow, bent over her clasped hands as she rocks back and forth on the temple floor. She has lost herself in her cries to God, so much that she breathes prayer with her whole body.

Year after year, Hannah comes here, to this temple, to ask for a son who can carry her name, who can provide for her and protect her as she ages.

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And God sees her. And God remembers her. And out of her faithful heart and her praying body, that son is born, already named He who is from God, because Hannah knows the miracle of him even before he leaves her womb.

She takes her baby, fresh into this world, back to the familiar temple, back to that same priest who marveled at her body-prayer, and she gives her child back to the God who gave him first to her.

Like the young woman Mary would so many centuries later, Hannah sings thanksgiving to her mighty God, in words so beautiful and eloquent that they echo for generations.

There is no one holy like the Lord, there is no one besides you;
There is no rock like our God.

I can only imagine that her body prays this prayer too, moving now in twirling dance, arms thrown out to take in the goodness of this moment, feet gliding over the same temple floor that held her tears for all those years before.

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Each year after that, her pilgrimage to the temple bears new purpose: to see her miracle son, grown into a boy, who lives in the sacred space where he was truly conceived. She bears more children, now that she has stepped into the role she always dreamed: mother.

And I see her, one more time, praying with her body – as her middle swells large with new life, as she bends to carry them, to rock them. I see her as she moves about her home, caring and cleaning, moving with the grace of a woman who has born sorrow and children both. I imagine her humming that hymn of thanksgiving sung that joyful day in the temple, worshipping with every moment of her life.

Hannah, whose very life is faithfulness and praise.

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A Legacy of Faithfulness: Words in the Dark

Photo by Lawrence OP

The lectionary reading this week is the story of a little boy hearing the voice of God — strange whispers in the night that call him into the leadership that will be his adulthood.

“Samuel! Samuel!”

The little boy has no idea at the time, as he lies curled up on the temple floor, what the future holds for him. He has no idea of the legacy he will build, or the legacy from which he has been born.

Faithfulness has born him and faithfulness he will bear.

“Samuel! Samuel!” His name, meaning He who is from God.

But Samuel, just a boy when he hears the whisper of God, doesn’t understand the calling of that voice. Although he sleeps mere feet from the ark of the covenant – that sacred vessel that held God’s presence – he doesn’t yet realize that God is even closer still. God already knows his name, knows his being intimately.

“Samuel! Samuel!”

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Three times is enough, so the boy gets up and wakes his teacher. Unable to imagine the greatness for which he is destined, Samuel believes it is only his teacher calling his name, not his God. There must be a reasonable explanation for voices in the night – they must be human, or imagined, but not divine.

His teacher, old and wise, tells him to be still and to open his ears.

So Samuel does. He has the audacity to answer the voice, to answer the call: “Here I am.

Speak, for your servant listens.”

And God says a word that is hard. The first word of God to this brave boy Samuel, He who is from God, is not easy. It will, says the Lord, make the ears of those who hear it tingle.

How can he feel, at that moment, this boy Samuel? Certainly shivers down his spine, certainly trembling in his small bones. He is stepping through a door into a new lifetime, whether he knows it or not. By answering the voice of God – “Here I am!” – he is answering the call to faithful leadership of a lost people.

Is that where greatness is born? In the dark confusion of night, in an unprepared child, in the heat of fear?

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After he has received the fullness of this difficult word, Samuel cannot fall back asleep. He lays there, on the hard ground, until tiny beams of morning light filter into the temple nave.

When it is time to open the doors of the Lord’s house, the still-frightened boy finds his patient teacher waiting on the other side. When he calls the boy’s name, Samuel already knows how to respond; he is already familiar with the answer:

“Here I am.”

And he hides nothing of what God has said, his second act of great courage. The first, of course, being his willingness to believe the whispers of God in the shadows of night.

Samuel’s life – begun by the faithful words of his mother, guided by the wise words of his teacher, and called by the powerful word of his God – moves forward on a path already laid for him. As for his own words, the story tell us, not one fell to the ground. Each one, true and deep, goes out to Israel, to change the course of the future.

Drifter

As we walked passed, he looked up at us from the curb, half-smoked cigarette hanging from his lips, and asked for spare change.

“I don’t have any money,” I tell him.

And I don’t. All I grabbed on my way out the door was my camera. This time was for art-making, not for shopping.

“Will you take my picture?” he asks when he sees my camera.

“Sure,” I say, and I kneel down to snap a few photos of him. It’s dusk and the last light is about to bleed out of the day.

“It’s a little dark,” I say, “so you might come out blurry. Try to hold still.” He tries.

After I take the picture, I sit down beside him to show him. Then I ask him his name.

He thinks for a moment, then tells me: “Drifter.”

I walk past the same spot the next day, but Drifter isn’t there anymore. He’s moved on to somewhere else.

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Reflections of God

We clasp hands, and hearts, to pray for our days. And I whisper the names of loved ones I’m holding dear– friends who are grieving, friends newly married, friends who are celebrating, friends who are far away.

I ask for peace to invade our souls, joy to fill our spirits.

He asks God, “May we see you reflected in the faces of those we encounter today.”

It sticks with me all day, and I do see God.

I see God in the middle school girls wearing matching outrageous hats that I pass on the way to the train station. I see God in the father and his skipping daughter, moving down the sidewalk, their old, faithful dog ambling behind. I see God in the tiniest kindergartener at recess, the mumbling homeless guy who always spends his day smoking on that particular red bench, the young woman who hands me coffee across the counter.

“Stay warm today,” she says.

“I’ll try.” I smile back.

And it’s everywhere — in the wisps of clouds that trail across the blue California sky, the shaking branches of the street-lining Maple trees, the spider gently swept off the doorstep, the shining faces of strangers moving about their downtown lives.

The reflection of God is everywhere. And my eyes aren’t even enough to take it in, so I open my heart, too.

Even then — wide open — it overflows.

The Work of a New Year

(a view of the lovely Claremont hills in southern California, on the last day of 2011)

The Business God Has Given Us

The author of Ecclesiastes writes:

I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

And isn’t this how it is at the start of a new year? We are caught up in wondering what business God has given us.

And yet, the mystery of time still pervades, beyond human comprehension or control. We understand that time is passing, but we cannot fully know the mind of God.

We just have to keep doing our best, day to day, with the business we’ve been given to do.

Endless and Proper Work

I think of the beautiful words of Mary Oliver in her poem Yes! No!”:

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

I wonder, isn’t this enough — to pay attention? Isn’t this the whole of the work to which we are called?

The waking in the morning, the moving through the day, the closing our minds and eyes at night — all these are summed up in this focus of attention on what matters.

And what matters is what brings us joy, what makes us more fully alive.

Nothing Better

Ecclesiastes goes on:

I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.

It’s there, the call to dig deeper into joy, to pay attention to what is life-giving.

And God has declared it, as he declared that first light of creation, good. It is more than good: there is nothing better than this work of being alive.

There are seasons for all these times of up and down, but it is always good to be living joyfully in each moment.

So here’s to a year of living like sheep: following faithfully the shepherd’s voice, drinking deep from the wells of life, and surrendering to the pleasure of rich pastures.