Blessing & Blaspheme

Scripture Text: 1 Samuel 2:1-36

Quotes for Reflection

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. by George Hayes
Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth.

Henri Nouwen, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction
We live in what one writer calls the “age of sensation.” We think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship. When we obey the command to praise God in our worship, our deep, essential need to be in a relationship with God is nurtured.

William G. Blaikie, Expository Lectures on the Book of First Samuel, 1887
Looking on herself as representing the nation of Israel, she seems to have felt that what had happened to her on a small scale was to happen to the nation on a large; for God would draw nigh to Israel as He had to her, make him His friend and confidential servant, humble the proud and malignant nations around him, and exalt him.

Application Questions
1. Why is music a fitting interlude in chapter two of the story of 1 Samuel?

2. Read Hannah’s song meditatively. What meaning does it have for Hannah’s story? For Israel’s story?

3. How does this story give us hope for the church and encourage our own faithfulness unto God?