Heartache. We’ve all faced it at some point. If you haven’t yet, you will. When a family member takes his or her last breath; when the doctor gives you the news you didn’t want to hear; when you get the phone call late at night that there’s been a horrible accident; when the doctor says you’ve lost the baby. We all can relate to the feeling of heartache. Deep dark despair. It’s part of our human existence in a sinful world, but we never get used to it. . .

And you’ve felt it you; we’ve all had those experiences in life that cut us to the core. When such deep deep heartache occurs in our lives, it can easily rattle us to the point where we begin to question. Why did this happen? How can good come out of this? Where was God in the midst of this? And we ask those questions which often times remain unanswered. How do we hope when heartache comes, and we seek answers to all of these unanswered questions? Where can we turn when life seems to be caving in around us?

As we come to our text today from I Samuel 2, we meet a woman who was no stranger to heartache. We meet Hannah, and we see her burden—her heartache over her inability to have children. But our focus today is where her heartache led her, because she learned to bring her heartache to God, and as result she was able to find both comfort and purpose in the midst of her trials, and if we follow the model of Hannah, we can do the same as well. So let’s look to the life of Hannah this morning, and as we do, I hope you’ll take one truth home with you today:

Big Idea: Through the depth of heartache we experience the richness of the character of God