By the Rev. Bill Nixon, Seventh-day Adventist Church

Probably we’ve all been tempted to think of the benevolence of God as a unidirectional line from Him to us. The following story from the Bible lends good support for the idea that God’s favorite type of giving looks more like a circle.

Elkanah was an honest man, but he had a problem. His wife, Hannah, was barren. “The Lord had closed her womb.” This was bad news for Elkanah, because children were to be his retirement plan. Elkanah, in his flawed human judgment, had taken a second wife named Peninnah. This was perfectly fine within his culture, perfectly awful within God’s. Two women cannot share a man without there being big trouble. And there was big trouble! The peace in Elkanah’s home vanished like the snow in April. Peninnah conceived and then taunted Hannah without mercy.

Hannah was only one of many women of faith whose battle with barrenness the Bible records. Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Ruth and Elizabeth all suffered the culturally perceived curse of barrenness. When God deemed it the correct time, each of these women did conceive. In a sense, God had asked each of these women, and Hannah, to wait. There is a little poem about patience that goes like this:

Patience is a virtue,

Possess it if you can.

Found seldom in a woman,

Never in a man.

(Being a man myself, I hope this poem is in error, for I am still waiting for patience.)

Unbeknownst to Elkanah, Peninnah, and the world, God was working out a greater plan for Hannah and the whole Israelite nation. Sometimes God asks us to wait because in the waiting time God teaches us patience and inspires us with the beauty of the divine circle of benevolence. Sure, sometimes God’s blessings are linear. God sends His rain on the just and the unjust. However, consider the following questions. In Jesus’ parable of the talents, did not the master expect something in return? Do farmers plant a seed without expecting a harvest? What about the Good Shepherd? Wouldn’t He expect His flock to grow?

A great blessing came from Hannah’s waiting time. While in the temple she made this vow to God:

“O LORD of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life. . .” (1 Samuel 1:11.)

Hannah laid her petition before the Lord, and, in her heart made a decision to return God’s gift to Him by devoting her child to His service. In the Lord’s own wisdom and timing, He granted conception of the little boy, Samuel. When her little boy was weaned, Hannah returned to the temple with him as a gift to God. The gift had come full circle in only a few years. When Samuel was older, God again gave him as a gift, this time to the whole nation of Israel as its new spiritual leader. The story of Hannah’s faithful giving of her only begotten son has been cherished for millennia. Her life teaches us a lesson in faith, patience and God’s divine circle of giving. But more than this, it was an act that foreshadowed God’s ultimate gift to mankind.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son. . .”

Why not change the line of benevolence into a circle by giving yourself to God?