True Love
📖Daily Reading
1 Samuel 1
🎥 Video
Join me on my morning walk as we rise and shine together by walking through the Bible daily and learn a practical applicable coaching nugget from the ultimate life coach - our creator (whatever that means to you). No judgement zone here, all are welcome, we are all on a spiritual journey because we are after all spiritual beings having a human experience.
📝 Reflection
1 Samuel 1: 15-18, 27-28
“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 even praying out of great anguish and sorrow.”
“In that case,” Elis said, “go in peace! May the God of Israel grant the request you have asked of him.”
“Oh, thank you, sir!” She exclaimed . Then she went back and benga to eat again, and she was no longer sad.
I asked the Lord to give me this boy, and he has granted my request. Now I am giving him to the Lord, and he will belong to the Lord his whole life.” And they worshiped the Lord there.
As we head into the book of 1 Samuel we see the juxtaposition of the three main characters in the first chapter who don’t have God as the heart of their relationship and they are cutting off their own noses to spite their faces. They are so focused on the type of love they want from each other and not getting it, that they miss the opportunity for true love. Peninnah and Hannah are both married to Elkanah. Penninah has children, Hannah does not. But Elkanah loves Hannah more than Penninah. Penninah wants Elkanah’s love and Hannah wants children. Because Penninah is not getting the affection from Elkanah that she wants she is jealous of Hannah and takes out her anger on Hannah by taunting her for not having children.
This makes Hannah very sad, not only is she sad because of being childless but she is being tormented for it by the other woman. Elkanah in is own human wisdom ramps up his affection for Hannah to reassure her. This just makes things worse and fuels Penninah anger and jealously. They all are stuck in their own desires and trying to meet each other’s love with their own love. Sounds like a modern day soap opera, right?!
Elkanah is confused and seems to not be paying attention, like we see his counterpart, Boaz doing in the book of Ruth. He says to Hannah, “why are you so sad because you have no children, you have me, isn’t that better than having 10 sons?”. Hannah finally can’t take it anymore and she gives up doing things her way and the way she had always done it. She took her heart and her circumstances before the Lord and surrendered. This is true love. She stopped trying to get it right in her own strength and was tired of feeling so sad and depressed all the time. She not only surrendered her own heart but she dedicates her first child to the Lord if the Lord grants her hearts desire of children. True love is selfless and sacrificial. But we can’t be truly selfless on our own, this is our conundrum. When we do, we make it about us and we turn ourselves into little ‘g’ods.
This is the trap that these three were in trying to meet each others need for love with their own love - it is misguided and just gets it backward even with good intentions. Penninah gets a bad rap here, but I can imagine that she in her own way was trying to be so nice and loving to Elkanah and had convinced herself that she was doing everything ‘she’ could to be a good wife and even providing children for her husband and yet it still wasn’t enough. She probably felt rejected and justified in her bitterness toward Hannah.
Ok, for my fellow Princess Bride 👸fans. I picked the title today from my favorite movie again. Even though Buttercup and Wesley have true love for each other, there is a scene where they argue because they couldn’t see past their own hurt and their own efforts of loving each other and staying true to that love. Wesley even accuses her of ‘not being capable of love’, she pushes him down the hills, not knowing it was him, and he yells out “as ….you… wiiisshhhh’. Then she dramatically throws herself down the hill. They reunite only to have the jealous prince Humperdink catch up with them, nearly kill Wesley and as they are trying to revive him. They ask him what is worth living for? And he says in his almost dead state ‘true love…..”.
I think he was right, this is all we have worth living for at the end of the day. You hear this over and over and over again from people who reach the end of their lives, and yet we who are living and have opportunities all around us, miss it! Not only that we often will ‘cut off our noses to spite our faces’! When we try to love in our own way and in our own strength, we will often mess it up with God being the center and the source of true love. The road to hell is often paved with good intentions.
✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt
Where in your life are your good intentions and your own attempts at love leaving you frustrated? How can you take the lesson from this story and apply it?
📖Tomorrows Reading
1 Samuel 2
Coaching Opportunity
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