Hannah’s lips moved, but Eli heard no voice.
She had come before the Lord with grief she could no longer keep to herself. She wanted a child. As she continued praying, Eli watched her mouth and mistook her silence for drunkenness.
Hannah explained that she had drunk neither wine nor strong drink. She had been pouring out her soul before the Lord.
Eli had seen her lips and misunderstood her. God knew the sorrow behind them.
We depend upon words to tell one another what is happening inside. Even then, we misunderstand. Someone struggles to explain a hurt, and we hear an accusation. Someone speaks confidently, and we mistake confidence for honesty. Sometimes the person saying the least carries more than anyone in the room realizes.
God does not have to guess what silence means.
David wrote of the Lord knowing his thoughts from afar. Before a word reached his tongue, God knew it altogether. The same psalm speaks of God forming him in his mother’s womb and seeing him while his body was still taking shape.
God told Jeremiah, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee.” Jeremiah’s life and calling were known to God before anyone could watch that life unfold.
We are not told what communication may take place between God and a child in the womb. We are told enough to know that the child is not hidden from Him. His knowledge reaches beyond a developing body to the person, the heart, and the life we cannot yet see. Whatever remains unknown to us is fully known to God.
For someone grieving a child lost before birth, whether through miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, that knowledge matters deeply. That child was never unknown to God. The life others never had the opportunity to know was fully known to Him.
We are not told every detail of how He deals with a child whose life ended so soon. We do know that He understands everything we cannot, and His judgment will be just. We can entrust that child to Him without pretending to know more than He has revealed.
Our knowledge of another person begins with what we can observe. God’s knowledge reaches where our observation cannot go.
That matters when we think about those who cannot explain themselves: a child who has not learned to speak, a person with profound disabilities, or someone whose familiar words have slipped away through dementia. Their difficulty communicating with us does not leave God struggling to understand them.
A failing memory does not cause God to forget the person.
We should be careful about turning our own limitations into limits upon His knowledge. We may be unable to discover what someone understands. We may not know how to reach them. Neither difficulty makes that person hidden from the One who made them.
Scripture also describes the Spirit helping believers when they do not know what to pray. His intercession reaches beyond what they can put into words. Their weakness is known, and God supplies help within it.
Salvation has never been a prize for the quickest mind or the most polished explanation. Its cost was borne by Jesus Christ. We receive His saving grace through faith; we do not purchase it with vocabulary, memory, or an impressive account of ourselves.
God knows each person fully. He understands every limitation, every circumstance, and everything beyond our reach. His judgment will contain no mistaken identity, overlooked suffering, or misunderstanding of a heart.
Abraham’s question still stands: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
Our uncertainty about the details gives us reason to depend upon His justice and mercy. It gives us no reason to suspect that someone has escaped His notice.
That same knowledge reaches those of us who can speak quite well. We can dress selfish motives in generous language. We can explain a wrong until it sounds almost reasonable. The words may persuade another person, but they cannot conceal the truth from God.
His knowledge comforts the person who cannot explain himself and exposes the person who thinks he has explained everything away.
Hannah stood before Eli with a prayer he could not hear and a sorrow he misunderstood.
The Lord needed no interpreter.
He understands.
“For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.” —Psalm 139:4
—Jeff Wager
#WagerEssays #TheEssayDepot #WhatGodSays #Apologetics #Theology