Brokenness does not look pretty. Maybe you can pretend for awhile, put on the ‘Sunday best’ when you are around others, and, with the help of a few social media filters, look like the ‘perfect Christian’ who has it all together. Eventually, though, the façade will crumble.

When you find yourself without a façade, broken and hurting, hopefully you will do what Hannah did in First Samuel 1, and pour out your soul to the Lord (I Samuel 1:10-11). This kind of brokenness is not pretty. It is not the kind of perfect picture that makes for great pictures on the church website. In fact, Eli the priest misunderstood Hannah, and he jumped to a conclusion.

Sometimes working in ministry can make you a little jaded, and Eli assumed Hannah was drunk (verse 14). Perhaps the last thing someone needs when going through a very difficult, broken time is a false, baseless accusation, especially from the Man of God! It would have been so easy – and perhaps justified – for her to take offence; but she didn’t.

I’m impressed with the grace with which she handled the situation, answering the accusation in verse 17, “…No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the LORD.”

She did not tell Eli that she was one of two wives of her husband, and that she was childless. She did not tell him about how difficult her homelife was and that the other wife “was her adversary” and “provoked her sore” because she was barren. She did not tell him that these bitter circumstances had gone on for years, causing trouble in their marriage.

Yet, in the conversation that she and Eli did have, she chose not to take offence. What she received instead was a promise. Eli promised, on behalf of God, promised that she would receive her petition. Eli did not know what that petition was, nor did he know that once Samuel was born, he would be raising him in his old age (God has a sense of humor), because Hannah gave her firstborn to God, and Samuel went on to replace Eli.

God delivered! At last, her bitterness was replaced with healing. She went on to have five more children after Samuel. God’s blessing was truly evident in her life!

We should be like Hannah. We should not feel like we have to put up the “perfect Christian” façade in the midst of brokenness; instead, we should pour out our troubles at the feet of the cross – where there is a real solution. When offences come, we do not have to take them up, but we can instead respond graciously. Above all, we can rest knowing that we serve a God that delights in healing the hurt and hearing the silent cries of his children!