Hannah's Loan

"For this child I prayed; and the Lord has granted me the petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives, he is given to the Lord."

1 Samuel 1:27-28

So it's been one of those crazy seasons at church lately: planning, facilitating, and attending ministry training sessions (3 in one Sunday, the first one started at 9:30 AM, the last one ended at 1 AM), make up training sessions, United Life board meetings, decorating for VBS, VBS leaders' meetings, pastors' meetings, education department meetings...not to mention the usual slate of preaching and teaching that I'm doing for both the English and Children's ministries. While all that has been life giving and exciting, one thing tends to happen when I get super busy like this: I lose stuff. I mean, you're talking about a guy who will forget to bring his lunch to the office if he doesn't put right next to his shoes (and even then it's not guaranteed...nothing like coming home after a long day to a warm turkey and cheese sandwich).

And lose stuff I have. Important stuff. I don't want to get into the details here, but let me say that when I got home early Monday morning after the final ministry training session of the day, I stayed up for another two hours looking for it. I took a nap and started searching again. I spent some time last night looking for it as well. Nothing.

How do you feel when you lose stuff? All I can say is that, though it usually takes a lot to get me visibly frustrated, I've been doing a lot of angry exhaling, sometimes in the form of choice words, over the last few days. My mind is even running hotter, seeking to place blame on everything and everyone for the fact that I cannot find what I'm looking for.

And, in that context, God finally convinced me to stop praying that he would show me where I put what I was looking for, and start just being with him for his sake. I mean, in the back of my mind as I was on my frantic search, I knew that my life was in his hands, and there was no reason to panic or let my frustration turn into rage. But at the same time I couldn't help it: every free second I had to look, look, look, and that didn't give me a whole lot of time or energy to sit and listen to Him.

But I did, and I have to share with you what he showed me. He brought me to the story of Hannah, the mother of one of Israel's greatest leaders, the prophet/judge Samuel. At the end of that story, as he is giving Samuel to the priest to raise into God's service, Hannah says this interesting thing. She says, "I have lent him to the Lord".

Now I don't want to make too much of the word "lend" here, mainly because I don't have the time to do a thorough grammatical analysis of this passage. The word, however, does catch the eye, doesn't it? Usually lending comes with the idea that we're expecting something back. If I lend you money, you can do what you want with it, just as long as I get it back. But Hannah is clearly not expecting Samuel back. She has given him over to the priests, and, ultimately, to God, for life.

Losing things, lending things...it's easy to forget that this whole world and everything in it really belongs to God. As expensive as one jewel is, how much more is the world that holds them all? And all of it is His. I think what Hannah may be getting right as she dedicates her son to God is that Samuel was already God's in the first place. "Lending", unlike giving away, implies an ongoing relationship, and Hannah's lending of Samuel to God's service is an extension of God's giving of Samuel to her in the first place. God's things aren't separate from Hannah's things...they are one and the same.

And you know what happened after I took this time to reflect on his word and pray? Well, I still haven't found what I was looking for. But I am reminded that the thing I lost isn't really mine anyways, but God's. And, thankfully, he knows where it is, and he knows what he's doing with it.