Read: 1 Samuel 2:1-10
I rejoice in your salvation. (v. 1)
What makes joy so important that we celebrate it all week during Advent? It’s easy to confuse joy for something else. Although joy and happiness appear almost the same, they have completely different sources. Happiness is “outside-in”: it’s an emotional reaction to external circumstances. Joy is “inside-out”: it’s a in internal condition that can be impervious to external circumstances. That’s the way joy is described in the Bible. Case in point: Hannah.
Hannah’s story is one of heartbreak. She suffered years of infertility, mistreated by her husband’s other wife. When Hannah’s sadness gave way to the happiness of her son’s birth, she followed the promise she had made and did the unexpected: she gave him away. Then Hannah did something even more unexpected: she burst into song. “My heart exults in the LORD . . . I rejoice in your salvation” (v. 1). In spite of a lifetime of sadness and an unimaginable sacrifice, Hannah was filled with joy. Why?
The source of Hannah’s heartbreak was not her childlessness but how she interpreted it: she was certain God had abandoned her. Samuel, her miracle child, was proof that God had neither forgotten nor forsaken her. That gave her a joy no circumstance could take away. That is our joy too. The message of the whole Bible is that our true treasure is God himself. Nothing can compensate for God’s absence in your life. No gift is greater than God’s presence in your life. Our joy is the God who will never forget or forsake us: Immanuel, God with us.
As you pray, take joy in God’s presence.
Ben Van Arragon is an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church in North America. After twenty years of congregational ministry, he now serves his denomination as a pastor wellbeing consultant in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
