Hannah and the Questions That Don’t Help

well this morning’s reading in the lectionary was about Hannah pouring out her pouring out her soul and her misery to the Lord and she was begging for a son and she eventually was granted her request and bore Samuel but it occurs to me that this is one of those occasions where it’s tempting to say well was God really just waiting for her prayer and he answered it or got God answered her prayer you know would he would Got would Got have eventually given her the prayer the answer her prayer if she had not even prayed you know what is the impact of other people playing is it just a psychological event that you know brings brings closure you know and doesn’t really mean anything supernaturally you know or you know how how do you how do you reconcile you know this this this idea of God that we have with the idea that he can be influenced by prayer you know and to me these are the type of questions that are distraction these are the kind of parlor games that theologians play and church nerds play and they’re not helpful and I think they’re not being helpful as a feature not a bug to use the cliche because it’s I said before in terms of Christ the idea is to grab the life ring we’re drowning existentially grab the life ring don’t debate about what brand the life ring is how the life ring was tossed was it overhand or underhand or sideways what was the life ring made out of was it 50% recycled you know these are not the kind of questions that are helpful if you’re drowning these are the type of questions that reflect back on us and our own misery and don’t grab onto the life ring and frankly I think that any attempt to try to make these questions intelligible and make you know give us an answer I think that they they don’t help and I’m not saying that we should just arbitrarily invent an abstract mystery you know like an invisible friend to help us cope I think we have to be attuned to God and his entry into our life and however he does that and I think that any attempt to try to categorize or explain or you know rationalize or demythologize or whatever you want to call it I’m not against demythologization as a as a whole because I think it can actually help remove some cultural baggage and get down to the root of things which then allows us to see that there is a supernatural you know but but the point is that whether you and that’s and you don’t have to believe in the supernatural get started or you don’t believe in the supernatural ever to have God love you but again I think that you know we don’t need know the mechanics we can pray we can not pray we can act as the spirit leads us we can act as our emotions lead us and leave the details to the parlor games which don’t help