DAY 38 - GO IN PEACE
KEATON TUCKER, YA GROUPS TEAM LEAD
“Do not regard your servant as worthless, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation. Then Eli answered ‘go in peace.’” 1 Samuel 1:16-17
In this passage of scripture, a woman named Hannah is in great distress because she cannot have a child. Her husband had another wife (which is stressful enough) and she had children and it says of this woman that she would “provoke her grievously to irritate her year by year.” What a woman.
I don’t know the burden of desiring to have a child and it goes unfulfilled but I do know that when hope is stripped from someone, life begins to feel meaningless and painful. It says in Proverbs “hope deferred makes the heart sick”. Hannah’s heart felt sick because her hope had been stripped from her. Amplify that by another person who is intentionally irritating her about the one thing she desires and I have to imagine she felt worthless. Frustrated. Anxious.
You see, all of these feelings are always attached to something else.
I feel worthless because…
I feel frustrated because…
I feel anxious because…
The root to all of these feelings in a sense of hopelessness. That life will remain this way forever. There is no expectation of a better tomorrow or of a desire fulfilled. It’s a sense of being stuck right where you are. Where is God?
Psalm 42 strikes the chord of what human hopelessness is like when David screams from his depth “why are you downcast my soul!?”. He is in a fight with himself to figure out why he is feeling hopeless. Ever been there? Yeah me too. Maybe the right response to hopelessness isn’t to figure out why and correct it. Maybe the right response is to identify what you’re feeling, the source, and to lay it before God and friends (or maybe even to scream it out loud) so you can hear the ever calming words:
“Go in peace.”
What I love most about Eli’s response to Hannah isn’t “you just need to trust God”. Do you know that well-intentioned friend who responds to your emotions by saying “you just need to _____”?
No. He heard her and his only response was “go in peace.” Almost always in the Bible the words “go in peace” and followed by an affirmation that God has heard you. Almost always.
Hey, it’s okay. Whatever you’re feeling, it’s okay. It won’t be this way forever. There is nothing to fix, nothing to correct. It’s okay. Speak to God out of your anxiety and frustration. Then hear him say:
Go in peace.