The call came from a friend on a Tuesday afternoon in June. “Lumuli, you can come now.” I don’t remember how I responded. I only remember walking down that hospital corridor not knowing what I would find behind the door. Next thing I was holding her. I have no words for that moment. Joy comes close. But joy alone doesn’t capture it. Holding my daughter for the first time, I called everyone in the room to pray with me. My prayer wasn’t planned. The words were purely reflexive. And as I prayed, one voice kept returning to me: not my own, but Hannah’s.
Her Song Wasn’t About the Baby
Hannah waited longer than we did. She wept longer than we did. And when the Lord finally opened her womb and gave her Samuel, she didn’t simply hold her son and move on with her life. She sang. “My heart exults in the Lord; my horn is exalted in the Lord” (1 Samuel 2:1). Notice what her song isn’t about. It isn’t a song about a baby. Samuel isn’t the subject. It’s a song about the God who gives children.
It’s a song about the God who gives children.
By the second verse she is no longer speaking of herself at all. “There is none holy like the Lord: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God” (1 Samuel 2:2). Hannah sings about the Lord who “raises up the poor from the dust” and “lifts the needy from the ash heap” (1 Samuel 2:8). Samuel is merely the occasion for the song.
That distinction matters for what I write next. For it is the same distinction I want to keep for my own daughter. She is the occasion for this joy. Only she was never its reason. The reason is the God who was worthy of worship in the eleven months we waited and remains worthy now that the waiting has ended. John Flavel put the same conviction plainly, “A saint loves the God of his mercies, not merely the mercies themselves.”
If You Are Still Waiting
If you are reading this and your own waiting hasn’t ended, I want to be careful here.
Maybe your waiting isn’t for a child. It may be for a job that has not come; a marriage that needs healing; news about someone you love. I’m not writing to tell you that your story will end the way mine did. I don’t know that. So I cannot promise what only God can. What I do know is this: Hannah’s song was true before Samuel was born. The Lord who raises the poor from the dust was already Lord over her barrenness. He was already, and always, holy. God was her rock, every one of the nights she wept without child.
I’m not writing to tell you that your story will end the way mine did.
David once fasted and prayed for his child’s life and God said “No”. When the child died, David didn’t curse God. He got up, washed, worshipped and ate. His servants asked why he mourned before the death but not after. He said the child would not return to him, but he would go to the child (2 Samuel 12:15-23). That is worship with nothing to show for the prayer. If your waiting ends the way David’s did rather than the way Hannah’s did, the God who was worthy of David’s worship that day is still worthy of yours.
Your waiting isn’t a gap in God’s goodness. Psalm 127:3 is still true even on the years it doesn’t feel true. Children are a heritage from the Lord. But he is not withholding his own goodness from you while you wait for that gift. He is present in the waiting the same way he was present in mine.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached that real joy is not the soul’s response to circumstance. It is the soul’s response to the knowledge of Christ. That means the joy available to you today, in whatever room you’re waiting, isn’t smaller than the joy I felt in that hospital room. It is the same joy—a joy resting on the same Christ—whether or not your prayer is answered. So pray the way I prayed in that room. Not only when the answer comes, but even as you wait.
Praise God for What’s Already True
Richard Baxter warned that the most dangerous mistake our souls are capable of is to mistake the creature for God, and earth for heaven. I don’t want to make that mistake with my daughter. She isn’t my reason for worship. She is the reason I remembered, again, to worship. I am not telling you God became good on that Tuesday afternoon in June. I am telling you what he was good all along, and what her small, breathing weight in my arms only confirmed it.
The most dangerous mistake our souls are capable of is to mistake the creature for God.
So today, whether you’re holding your own child or still holding an empty place at your table, hold this instead: God was worthy before the answer came. He remains worthy now. Sing what is always true. Let the waiting or the joy be only the occasion for the song, never its reason.
