Finding room for Hannah
James Cathcart
December 07, 2025
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1 Samuel 1: 9-19 (NIVUK)
9 Once when they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on his chair by the doorpost of the Lord’s house. 10 In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly. 11 And she made a vow, saying, ‘Lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.’
12 As she kept on praying to the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. 13 Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk 14 and said to her, ‘How long are you going to stay drunk? Put away your wine.’
15 ‘Not so, my lord,’ Hannah replied, ‘I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. 16 Do not take your servant for a wicked woman; I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief.’
17 Eli answered, ‘Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.’
18 She said, ‘May your servant find favour in your eyes.’ Then she went her way and ate something, and her face was no longer downcast.
19 Early the next morning they arose and worshipped before the Lord and then went back to their home at Ramah. Elkanah made love to his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her.
Many of us find ourselves like Hannah at this time of year. Pacing around, feeling out in the cold literally and figuratively. We are on edge, like we don’t fit or belong. The intense materialistic spectacle of the season can magnify the isolation we already feel through hardship, loneliness or bereavement. It can put pressure on us to feel the fulfilment, purpose, and ‘roles’ being sold to us — the selfless parent, the eco-giver, the grateful neighbour…
Loneliness and cold
both sensations that sneak up on you
bringing with them the absence of sensation.
There is no substance ‘cold’
only the dissipation of heat.
Solitude itself has no substance
just distance.
But God wants you to know there is room for Hannah and there is room for you. None of us are left out in the cold with God. Not Hannah, not Mary — Jesus’s mother — two women who were pushed ‘out in the cold’ in their times, but whom God never abandoned. Their lives enact the poetry of God’s love, the warmth that knows no limits, no lack, no distance. The love that finds a place for each of us despite what the world thinks.
Prayer:
Dear God,
Warm our hearts
warm our hands
warm our heads
warm our hopes.
May we feel the stirring of Hannah,
the stirring of Mary.
Amen.
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