“Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.” 1 Samuel 1:16
The season of Advent lifts up this story of answered prayer from the beginning of First Samuel, because the birth of Samuel is seen in Christian tradition as a precursor to the birth of Jesus. And the text from I Samuel is read not only as a precursor in the historical sense of coming before, but also in the Christian allegorical sense of speaking about a longing that would be fulfilled only with the birth of Jesus.
Instead of focusing on this traditionalist, and supercessionist logic of precursor/fulfillment, I would like us to stay close to the story’s depiction of Hannah’s tears. She has been tormented for years by Peninah for being barren, and she pleads with God to lift the stigma of barrenness from her. Eli takes her to be drunk as she moves her lips while “pouring out her soul before the Lord,” “speaking out of great anxiety and vexation.”
There is desperation in Hannah’s anxiety, just as there is in so many of our prayers in these days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prayers and tears over loss of jobs, eviction from homes; tears of profound grief across the world for those who have already been ill and died. And in Hannah’s vexation we can hear as well the outrage of a nation and world over the injustice of George Floyd’s death—a death representing so many countless others—voicing a prophetic call for the courage to turn our hearts around and stand for justice with those who are suffering.
With Hannah, let us pour out our hearts this Advent, longing for newness of life and for the mystery of God to draw near to us.
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