vv 15-16 “Oh no, sir!” she replied. “I haven’t been drinking wine or anything stronger. But I am very discouraged, and I was pouring out my heart to the Lord. Don’t think I am a wicked woman! For I have been praying out of great anguish and sorrow.”
The wife who prayed.
Hannah’s silent outpouring of grief in prayer must have struck the old priest Eli as unusual – so much so that he presumed she was drunk. But her prayer was heartfelt and urgent, and was combined with a sincere promise to offer her son back to God to serve Him at the place of worship in Shiloh.
In the fire and heat of a moment people do make promises to God; they are almost a kind of ‘bargain prayer’ – if you answer my prayer God, then I will do …. I’m not sure that is a good way to pray really; faith and trust will accept the answer that God gives even if the answer is NO or simply silence. Hannah was totally sincere however and Eli’s assurance of God’s answer convinced her that all would be well. She could smile again and her appetite returned. (v 18)
This, I feel, was no passing impulse to pray. It seems to have been part of her nature and practice. How often despair can strike us down, and dumb, so that we fail to bring our real issues to God as we pray. We can pray for other people and see God at work in their lives, but when it comes to praying about the deeper issues in our own lives they seem so selfish that we feel unable to open up to God about them. There is a place for what we might regard as selfish prayer; there is nothing wrong with a man praying for a new job in order to better help his family, or a woman asking God for the grace to handle difficult circumstances in relationships.
There is no such thing as selfish prayer, only selfish motives!
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