Prolife Kitchen Table

Episode 37 - Prepare the Way - Baby Chris Week 37

• Presbyterians Protecting Life • Season 1 • Episode 37

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The story of Hannah and the child she prayed for is beloved among the pregnancy accounts contained in Scripture.  We continue to use Marie Bowen's book, Pregnant With Promise, to explore the theme of rejoicing in answered prayer.

Scripture references contained in this episode include:

I Samuel 1:1-2:20     Numbers 30:10-15            Psalm 37:4; 103:5

Matthew 19:28-30   Romans 8:5, 28                 Matthew 3:3

Genesis 15-21; 29:18-30; 42-45                         Joshua 4:19

Matthew 24:8, 26         I Thessalonians 5:3    Rev. 19:7

Luke 2:1-20               2 Timothy 4:8                   Malachi 3:1


                   


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Guttmacher Institute https://guttmacher.org


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Host:

Welcome back to the ProLife Kitchen Table. I'm your host, Deborah Hollifield, and I'm hoping that you will welcome a little break from all the busyness of cleaning up from Thanksgiving and preparing for Christmas. I know it's not easy to take a minute for yourself. All my life I've been busy making this season special for others whom I love, and I can find it hard to sit for long without feeling guilty. But this is what God wants us to do in the weeks coming up to Christmas, that time of Advent when we settle our hearts and admit some of the expectation of holy presence into our homes and our hearts.

Host:

This week's lesson is about Hannah, who is an exceptionally precious woman among all the pregnancy stories of the Bible. The life of Hannah shows how God knows our deepest longings and hears our prayers and prompts us through his faithfulness to worship. We have left the book of Judges behind, that time when there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes, and it was chaotic and it was violent, and it was especially a trial for women who suffered a lot of abuse during those dangerous days.

Host:

The story of Hannah is set in the Bible's book of first Samuel. Samuel is Hannah's son, and during his lifetime he would anoint the first two kings of Israel, and he defined much of the transition time from rule by judges to the rule of kings. Hannah was married to a faithful man named Elkanah. Every year Elkanah took his wives and children to the festival of tabernacles, held at the tent of meeting in a place called Shiloh, where all Israel assembled. The purpose of the Feast of Tabernacles was to remember God's care for his people during their desert journey from Egypt to the Promised Land.

Host:

It was also a time when they expressed their gratitude to God for the years of crops and fertility of the people. It would have been a difficult occasion for Elkanah's wife, Hannah, who, like a lot of women we have been reading about, was barren.

Host:

Elkanah had two wives, Hannah and Paninah. Once again we see how polygamy, having more than one wife, set up a conflict in the home because of mutual jealousy between his wives. The Bible describes Paninah as Hannah's rival. Paninah had children, but Hannah did not. And like Jacob loved Rachel more than he loved Leah, Elkanah loved Hannah more than he loved Paninah.

Host:

Paninah, though, was not a woman of good character and went out of her way to irritate Hannah and provoke her over her childlessness until Hannah cried and wouldn't eat. Elkanah saw Hannah's pain, and this distressed him. He tried to comfort her by saying, "Hannah, why do you weep and why don't you eat, and why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?" in the hope that she would find some satisfaction in his love and care for her.

Host:

So when Elkanah took his family up to Shiloh to the Feast of Tabernacles, Hannah went into the tabernacle to pray. Verse 10 says that she was weeping "in the bitterness of her soul," and out of her deep distress she prayed to the Lord. She prayed and cried so hard that the Bible says that the priest, whose name was Eli, thought she was drunk.

Host:

Her prayer was, "O Lord Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant, but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head."

Host:

If the promise that she made at the end of her prayer, not to ever cut her son's hair, seems familiar to you, it's because that is part of the Nazarite vow that we learned about when we read about when the angel of the Lord told Samson's mother she was not to cut his hair, because he was to be a Nazarite from the w omb.

Host:

Another thing we should understand about a married Hebrew woman's vow to God is that in the book of Numbers, chapter 30, verses 10- 15, it explains that her husband can render her vow void when he hears it if he chooses to do so, and she will not be bound by it, and the Lord will forgive her for breaking her promise.

Host:

But if her husband hears about it later on and then makes the vow null and void, the Lord will hold him responsible for breaking her promise. So her prayer is a very big deal.

Host:

First, she's offering to give away the child she's praying for; and second, she is boldly making this offer without consulting her husband; and third she is taking a risk that when her husband learns that she has made this promise, that he will render it null, and then God will punish him for doing so. In short, she is offering God her family, her future, and her husband's very life.

Host:

To make such a prayer tells us a lot about the depth of Hannah's despair over her barrenness and her trust in her relationship with the Lord.

Host:

Well, God did grant Hannah's petition to "remember me and not forget your servant," because I Samuel chapter 1 verse 19 records, "and the LORD remembered her, and Hannah conceived and bore a son."

Host:

It must have been hard from the moment that Hannah was aware that she had conceived, to think of giving her son back to the Lord. The first year after Samuel's birth, the Bible says she did not go with Elkanah and the rest of the family back to the festival of tabernacles at Shiloh. In fact, Hannah keeps Samuel at home until after he was weaned, which was probably three to five years o ld.

Host:

But eventually Hannah and Elkanah do take Samuel to the house of the Lord at Shiloh, along with the sacrifice of a bull and some flour and wine.

Host:

Hannah can hardly wait to tell the priest, Eli, what God has done. She says, "O my Lord, as you live, my Lord, I am the woman who is standing here in your presence, praying to the Lord. For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord, and as long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord."

Host:

I don't know what it was like for Hannah to keep that vow and give her son over to the service of God. But I remember being a young mother myself and reading this story when my own son was about the age of Samuel when Hannah released him to God. It struck me that while not all of us make such a vow, that eventually all of us must give our children and their lives over to God.

Host:

I realized that none of us can protect our children from everything or prepare them for everything that will come their way in life. I realized that as much as I wanted to, I could not keep my son close to me forever, even though it seemed like a long time before he would be grown.

Host:

But somehow in my spirit I knew that our children are only on loan to us from God. We only have them for a short time, and then we do give them back to God. And so at his young age, I prayed and gave my son over to God with the prayer that God would continue to watch over him and guide his life, and that my main job would be to love and pray for him and watch God work through him. I won't say that I've never tried, or at least wanted to try, to influence his choices more than I should have. But it was always in the back of my mind that he belonged to God and that God's love for my son was more vast than even my own.

Host:

As Hannah left Samuel with Eli, she returned to her home with a prayer of rejoicing that is recorded in 1 Samuel chapter 2, verses 1- 11. I'm going to read her prayer from The Message version of the Bible because it seems like it has a little more energy in this modern paraphrase:

Host:

"I'm bursting with good news, I'm walking on air, I'm laughing at my rivals, and I'm dancing at my salvation. Nothing and no one is holy like God, no rock mountain like our God. Don't dare talk pretentiously, not a word of boasting ever, for God knows what's going on. He takes the measure of everything that happens.

Host:

"The weapons of the strong are smashed to pieces while the weak are infused with fresh strength. The well fed are out begging in the streets for crusts of bread while the hungry are getting second helpings. The barren woman has a house full of children while the mother of many is bereft.

Host:

"God brings death and God brings life, brings down to the grave and raises up. God brings poverty and God brings wealth, he lowers and he also lifts up. He puts poor people on their feet again, he rekindles burned out lives with fresh hope, restoring dignity and respect to their lives, a place in the sun!

Host:

"For the very structures of earth are God's. He has laid out his operations on a firm foundation. He protectively cares for his faithful friends step by step, but leaves the wicked to stumble in the dark.

Host:

"No one makes it in this life by sheer muscle. God's enemies will be blasted out of the sky, crashed in a heap and burned. God will set things right over all the earth, he'll give strength to his king, he'll set his anointed on top of the world!"

Host:

This prayer of rejoicing speaks to more than just childbirth. This is far and away different from the message of social justice that we hear so often in church and culture.

Host:

First, it points to God as the bringer of justice and not just ourselves or the government. Some might say that this feels more like a personal prayer of God's protection for a single person and not God's care for all of the poor and the weak. But the prayer makes clear that God is in control of wealth and poverty, hunger and provision, vindication and restoration of dignity for the oppressed, and all life and death.

Host:

Second, it reminds God's people that no matter what personal privation we face, that God is indeed in control, and that God is for us, and that God is good, and that God's judgments are always perfect, and that as Paul writes in the book of Romans, chapter 8, verse "We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose."

Host:

And third, the final portion of her prayer where she says that God's enemies will be blasted out of the sky, crashed in a heap and burned, and that God will set all things right over all the earth, give strength to his king, and set his anointed on top of the world, that is prophetic. She had no way of knowing that one day her son Samuel would anoint the first king of Israel. In a time when Israel only knew the rule of judges, Hannah proclaimed that God is the giver of strength to his king.

Host:

T his is not the end of the Hannah story. God will bless her again, and she will conceive and bear three more sons and two daughters, and the young man Samuel would grow in the presence of the Lord. Again, this story brings into focus how significant the lives of ordinary men and women are in God's plans to redeem us from the curse that humanity and the world are experiencing because of the crashing fall in Eden.

Host:

The day will indeed come when Jesus returns in glory, God's enemies will be crushed for a final time, never to rise and torment us again, and the whole creation will be restored to health and order. In that day all God's people will enjoy eternity on the new earth and fellowship with one another in the presence of Christ and without the burden of sin, when God remembers Hannah's prayer that he will set things right over all the earth, give strength to his King Jesus, and set his anointed on top of the world. What a day that will be! Thanks be to God!

Host:

And now we have reached our break, so take a moment to stretch and pour yourself a soda and marvel for a minute about the unseen ways that God might be using ordinary you and your most difficult challenges in his plans to redeem the world. And when you come back, we will begin our countdown to baby Chris's birth by reading about his 37th week in the womb.

Announcer:

Presbyterians Protecting Life has the resources you need to equip yourself and your congregation to champion life at every stage. We have answers to your questions, referrals to specialized care like abortion pill reversal and post-abortion recovery, current statistics and information, discussion starters, and devotionals to help you think about and share about pregnancy and abortion, adoption, foster care, and even suicide, assisted suicide and end-of-life challenges. Visit PPL.org to learn more.

Host:

This week 37 Baby Chris devotional is titled Prepare the Way. Hear the Word of the Lord: " Make ready the way of the Lord. Make his path straight." Matthew 3:3. Thanks be to G od.

Host:

At 37 weeks, Baby Chris recognizes familiar voices and turns towards them in the womb. The umbilical cord is now passing his mother's antibodies to him to protect him from diseases and germs he will be exposed to after birth. This week or next, his mother will feel the baby drop, helping her to breathe easier with more room for her lungs to expand.

Host:

Although some mothers may make appointments for an induced labor or cesarean section, most mothers don't know the day or the hour when labor will begin. When it comes, labor proceeds in stages, called prelabor, comma, then the first, second, and third stages. Prelabor is a latent phase where the mother's body makes its final preparations for active labor. Throughout pregnancy, the cervix is closed to protect against infection. During prelabor, the cervix will soften, sometimes it's called ripening, preparing it to open when contractions begin. Prelabor changes may take hours, days, or even weeks, sometimes without notice, and sometimes with occasional contractions. In the meantime, expectant mothers can only wait as their bodies prepare for birth.

Host:

The Old Testament has a series of descriptions of the preparation necessary for God's people to be ready for deliverance, from Abraham and Sarah's long wait for their promised child in Genesis chapter fifteen twenty one, Jacob's years of servitude as he waited for Rachel, Joseph years of captivity in Egypt before rising to a position to deliver his family from a famine, the Hebrew nation's wanderings in the desert before their deliverance into the promised land, Ezra and Nehemiah's careful plans before the rebuilding of Jerusalem, Esther's preparation in the king's harem before her role in delivering the Jews from an extermination plot, and more.

Host:

Between the testaments was the four hundred year silence of God, as God's people awaited a word from the Lord, until at last the voice of John the Baptist could be heard calling Israel to repentance and baptism in preparation for the coming of the Messiah. Like the antibodies that prepare the unborn infant's immune system for life in the petri dish of the world outside the womb, John urged sinful Israel to receive the baptism of repentance, for the kingdom of heaven was about to arrive.

Host:

Since the resurrection and ascension of Christ, God's people continue to wait for the return of Jesus for his church, the end of the effects of the curse, and the restoration of the world. But not just yet. Like an impending birth it could be another minute, another day, another week or more. No one knows the day or the hour. And in the meantime, we experience the increasing chaos and distress of the world which Jesus compared to the beginning of the birth pangs. This pre labor will be followed by the inescapable labor pain, that is the judgment that accompanies the return of Christ.

Host:

As we enter into the new church year that begins with Advent, the Christian world waits and prepares for the return of Christ and for our anticipated redemption, by remembering his first coming and celebrating his birth. For those who love his appearing, like a much loved and long awaited child, he will be received with joy.

Host:

Hear the word of the Lord: "Behold, I am going to send my messenger, and he will clear the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. And the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts." Malachi 3:1. Thanks be to God.

Announcer:

We hope you enjoyed this week's reflection. We encourage you to share it and join us next time on Pro Life Kitchen Table. May God bless you.

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Deborah Hollifield

Host