Worthlessness Revisited
What makes you feel worthless?
Hopefully nothing. I can't imagine a deeper pain a person can inflict on another than to treat them as worthless.
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
In today's reading, the High Priest, Eli, misinterprets Hannah's painful prayer to God and thinks she is drunk. How quick to judgment he was!
But it is Hannah's response that I find so interesting. Don't dismiss me, she is saying. I'm having a serious conversation with God, here!
And she was. She was promising to give her first born son over to a life in service to God if God would give her the child she longed for.
Now, think about that for a moment.
Does that sound selfish to you?
Well, there is more to the story and it all has to do with self-worth. To put it in perspective, how would you feel if the one thing you believed you were born to do was kept from you? How would you feel if the gift or talent you possessed that was worth everything in the world was taken away?
We hear stories all the time of people who have been wounded in combat, or athletes severely injured, or survivors of car crashes, who have a difficult time moving on with their lives after suffering a tragic loss of function, purpose and self-worth.
From the outside looking in, the picture may not look as bleak as it does from the inside looking out.
Hannah was being tormented by her husband's other wife, Peninnah, the one who could bear children. Peninnah was angry that Hannah was given a double portion of food, a form of compensation for her suffering.
But Hannah didn't want food. In a way, her husband's offering of it made her feel even more worthless.
Neither Eli, nor Hannah's husband, Elkanah, knew how to help her. Neither understood how debilitating that feeling of worthlessness could be. And it is a feeling The Bible takes us to several times in these stories. It is as though God wants us to know we are not worthless, and even more importantly, while no one else may understand the feeling, God does.
How great is that!
The one who is above all else, who created us in His image, knows us better than we know ourselves or each other, and He understands what we are going through. Greatness knows worthlessness.
If that doesn't give me hope, nothing will.
More to come...
Image Copyright: kiatipol / 123RF Stock Photo