Friday, March 9, 2012

1 Samuel 2

I think I might need to put off writing Hannah's monologue, because I am having trouble wrapping my head around her. She seems almost like a combination of Elizabeth and Mary. Her prayer of thankfulness reads like the rough draft of the Magnificat, and I wish I knew more about her.

Was her life miserable? It seems to have had only one major flaw, although I'm sure to someone who wants desperately to be a mother it is a flaw enough. Could her husband and her husband's other wife not make a family with her? Did having a son help? Was it the shame of not being able to provide Elkanah with sons?

A son who would do great things - every mother's dream and a few women's curse. She lost him right away, whereas when I wrote Elizabeth's monologue I imagined her losing him in pieces. She came to visit her miracle son once a year, she made him clothes, but how - after how long she waited for a child - could she bear it? And how could she praise God for it?

The point of family is where it always starts to seem unhuman what God asks of us. Does Jesus really begrudge us the chance to bury our fathers? Live with our wives? Hannah seems to have this down - she bore a servant for God and was delighted to serve Him in this way. She loved her son and did not begrudge him the joy of serving God even if it took her away from Him.

Something to admire there, certainly, but I can only hope I'll learn to understand it someday.

That someday I'll understand enough to write it - that I'll know serving and loving God in that way, but hopefully without having to follow her path.