I Samuel 1:5 The Lord had closed her womb

This seems like a strange thing for God to do.  Why would God close a woman’s womb, so that she wouldn’t have children? 

As I read that this morning, I saw that I had made a note on the text.  Some time ago, I noted that Hannah’s barrenness caused her distress, and because of that, she vowed to God that if He gave her a son, she would dedicate him to the Lord.

Hmm, and He did.  And this son turned out to be Samuel, one of the great men of the Bible.  She then went on to have 5 other children, none of whom we know anything about except that three of them were boys. 

So what does this all mean, if anything?

To me, it only makes sense in this way:

God knew long before Samuel was born or even conceived what kind of person he would turn out to be.  So He wanted Samuel to grow up in the Temple so that he would fully live that life.  His mother would never had made that vow if she had had children like most women did. 

What am I saying here?

I am saying that God knows human beings down to their cellular level.  He saw your future before you were conceived in the womb. 

Human beings are not like puppies or kittens, where if we think we have too many of them, we can dispose of a few.  We are created in the image of God, but I think we often fail to grasp the full significance of that.

Theologians will say that that means that we have self-consciousness, a mind, a soul, a will, a reason that can make moral choices.  What they tend to miss here is how that image binds us to God in ways we can’t or just don’t imagine.  Our physical children are the best way for us to understand in a very small way what this means.  We see ourselves in them in so many ways, and it binds us further to them.

We establish a child’s worth today by how far along it is developed in the womb, or whether this child is actually born, and then how functional we determine this person to be.  If a person is missing a few parts, we often regard this child’s existence as pointless.  But for a God who sees the soul, I don’t think that is the case.

God has entrusted human beings with an incredible gift and responsibility.  We get to create images of God all over the world.  It’s our choice.  It is often not a conscious or even a willing choice, but the result is the same.  We are entrusted with an incredibly precious gift from God: a human being.

Our society sees far more things as far more important than creating and nurturing these human beings.  After all, what is life all about?  Is it about having careers where we work all day to make money to buy stuff and then we die, and we evaluate our lives by how much money we made or how much stuff we had when we died? 

OR life is about loving and creating and nurturing human beings, because our relationships with them teaches us about the One in whose image we were created. 

I had a career.  I had successes and failures.  Nobody else cares about any of that.  Certainly not my former employers.   But what remains is my family, and the people in whom I have invested my life, even casually as I walk my dog or go shopping.

Our society marginalizes religion for the sake of inclusion or whatever, but it deprives its people of meaning and substance.  How would we know the enormous value of another human being if God Himself hadn’t told us?

 

 

 

Mark 9:23 All things are possible to him who believes

I do a lot of writing and teaching on the Bible.  So a lot of times I will see things and come to understand things that are beyond my experience.  That doesn’t change the fact that I’ve seen them and understood them.  It’s just I haven’t fully seen them in my life.

Sometimes you have to see the next steps before you can take them.  Yes, sometimes you’re walking in the dark.  I’ve done that for years at times.  Other times you see where you need to step.  Peter didn’t walk on water in the dark.  It didn’t surprise him that he was now going over the side of the boat.  He knew what he was going to do and then did it.  It didn’t last long, and we don’t know if he ever tried that again, but he saw what he needed to do and did it.

The verse here is one that we all know about, but we don’t know exactly what to do with it.  So I’m going to tell you.  And myself.

The other night I got angry with God.  Really angry.

There were some things I have prayed about for years.  Sorry for the lack of details here.  But praying for things means that the responsibility for these things happening falls on God.  The truth is that often the responsibility falls on us.

I know a lot of people don’t like to hear that, but I find that conclusion inescapable. 

In the story here, Mark 9:14–28, a man had brought his son to the disciples.  “Teacher, I brought You my son, possessed with a spirit which makes him mute; ¹⁸ and whenever it seizes him, it slams him to the ground and he foams at the mouth, and grinds his teeth and stiffens out. I told Your disciples to cast it out, and they couldn’t.”

And Jesus got upset.  “O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him to Me!”

²⁰ They brought the boy to Him. When he saw Him, immediately the spirit threw him into a convulsion, and falling to the ground, he began rolling around and foaming at the mouth. ²¹ And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. ²² “It has often thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!” ²³ And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.”

Jesus’ words mean nothing but that this man and the disciples could have and should have dealt with this already. 

Did the man pray for his son all these years?

Of course he did.

The disciples just met them, but they too should have been able to rid the boy of the demon.

All things are possible to him who believes.

What happens here is that people will say, I tried that, but it didn’t work.  Like Yoda said, Don’t try, Do. 

Things usually will not change immediately either when we pray or believe they will.  We read the stories in the Bible of great acts of faith, whether a healing or even raising someone from the dead, but we think these events happened in a vacuum.   

Maybe you’re not at this place yet.  Maybe you are.  This is where I need to go.  I just thought I should share this with you today.