Loving the broken
One of my greatest Achilles' heel in reading my Bible is stopping every time I come across a passage which explores or reveals love. What intrigues me is that it’s such an endless subject, it is God Himself after all. Every time I read about it I’m guaranteed to learn something new. This time, Elkanah’s love got to me.
“Elkanah her husband would say to her, ‘Hannah, why are you weeping? Why don’t you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?” 1 Samuel 1:8
You see the thing that makes loving people the job it is, is the fact that people are imperfect. I read through 1 John 4:20 the other day, and I realized why God pushed us so much to love our brother whom we see because we’d be liars to love Him who is unseen yet hate our brother. And the issue here is that we see our brother, we seem him with all his faults, weaknesses and imperfections. Admit it, walking in love is not a walk in the park, be it with a fellow Christian at church or your family at home, it calls for consistent patience, humility and selflessness. And this is what Elkanah was stuck with, loving a broken person.
Hannah was broken and insecure because of her barrenness. This blinded her from every act of love that her husband showed her. The Bible says her husband would give her a double portion of meat because he loved her, but she didn’t see this, she only saw and heard the provocations of her rival who always picked on her because of her barrenness. Out of frustration he would say these words because whatever he did, Hannah didn’t seem to see his efforts or his worth to her. And in all honesty, there was nothing Elkanah could do for her. Jacob told it straight to his wife Rachel when she was throwing a tantrum about her bareness:
“When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, ‘Give me children, or I’ll die!’ Jacob became angry with her and said, ‘Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?’” Genesis 30:1-2
One might say Jacob was wrong to get angry with her cause what does 1 Corinthians 13 say about anger? I went and read that. “It is not easily angered” (v5). Love does get angry, just not easily. In fact, love wouldn’t be love if it never got angry or jealous. But the lesson here is that Jacob saw that out of her insecurities, Rachel was looking to get from Jacob something Jacob couldn’t give.
All these men could do for their wives was to pray for them like Isaac did. Their brokenness was something only God could fix. Instead of walking out on them leading to more frustration, they had to push them closer to God. And so the Bible narrates to us how Hannah went up to pray all by herself, pouring out her heart before God in such an intense way that it drew the attention of the priest. Then came Samuel.
Sometimes we love people but we just get confused with the part of how to love them. We love broken people. Heck, I’m broken. The other day I had an epiphany of what a huge task it was to love someone like me, who has so many insecurities and who’s obsessed with the idea of perfection. In loving broken people, know that some things you can’t fix, some things are bigger than you. Sometimes when a car is really problematic, it’s not good enough to send it to any repairer, but to the manufacturer itself. So do that with those around you, draw them nearer to God when they give you a hard time, your love is limited…but God’s, it’s so vast that Paul said in Ephesians 3: 'May you have the power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, this love that surpasses knowledge.'
God’s love is always enough.
“Elkanah her husband would say to her, ‘Hannah, why are you weeping? Why don’t you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?” 1 Samuel 1:8
You see the thing that makes loving people the job it is, is the fact that people are imperfect. I read through 1 John 4:20 the other day, and I realized why God pushed us so much to love our brother whom we see because we’d be liars to love Him who is unseen yet hate our brother. And the issue here is that we see our brother, we seem him with all his faults, weaknesses and imperfections. Admit it, walking in love is not a walk in the park, be it with a fellow Christian at church or your family at home, it calls for consistent patience, humility and selflessness. And this is what Elkanah was stuck with, loving a broken person.
Hannah was broken and insecure because of her barrenness. This blinded her from every act of love that her husband showed her. The Bible says her husband would give her a double portion of meat because he loved her, but she didn’t see this, she only saw and heard the provocations of her rival who always picked on her because of her barrenness. Out of frustration he would say these words because whatever he did, Hannah didn’t seem to see his efforts or his worth to her. And in all honesty, there was nothing Elkanah could do for her. Jacob told it straight to his wife Rachel when she was throwing a tantrum about her bareness:
“When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, ‘Give me children, or I’ll die!’ Jacob became angry with her and said, ‘Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?’” Genesis 30:1-2
One might say Jacob was wrong to get angry with her cause what does 1 Corinthians 13 say about anger? I went and read that. “It is not easily angered” (v5). Love does get angry, just not easily. In fact, love wouldn’t be love if it never got angry or jealous. But the lesson here is that Jacob saw that out of her insecurities, Rachel was looking to get from Jacob something Jacob couldn’t give.
All these men could do for their wives was to pray for them like Isaac did. Their brokenness was something only God could fix. Instead of walking out on them leading to more frustration, they had to push them closer to God. And so the Bible narrates to us how Hannah went up to pray all by herself, pouring out her heart before God in such an intense way that it drew the attention of the priest. Then came Samuel.
Sometimes we love people but we just get confused with the part of how to love them. We love broken people. Heck, I’m broken. The other day I had an epiphany of what a huge task it was to love someone like me, who has so many insecurities and who’s obsessed with the idea of perfection. In loving broken people, know that some things you can’t fix, some things are bigger than you. Sometimes when a car is really problematic, it’s not good enough to send it to any repairer, but to the manufacturer itself. So do that with those around you, draw them nearer to God when they give you a hard time, your love is limited…but God’s, it’s so vast that Paul said in Ephesians 3: 'May you have the power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, this love that surpasses knowledge.'
God’s love is always enough.
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