When God blesses Hannah with her son, she keeps her promise. She does so with great rejoicing. She even sings a famous song of praise that makes up most of chapter 2 of 1st Samuel. I don’t want to quote the whole song, but let me give you a summary of what she praises God for. She sings about God’s omnipotence. He knows everything, including each person’s situation. She also praises His Holiness. God is always right and righteous in all of His decisions. She praises Him for His provision. He lavishly bestows his blessings on the land. He also protects His people. Hannah argues that she’s a recipient of all these blessings from God. God took her from a barren older woman to the mother of the leading prophet of Israel. This is the key to her worship of God. He reverses the fortunes of those who love him. He also reverses the fortunes of the wicked in the world as well.
God delights in reversing the fortunes of the faithful and the faithless. If you study the book of Joshua, we see two characters that explain this proclivity of God. First, we meet Rahab. She’s not an Israelite, but she is blessed for her identification with the Israelites and even finds her line in the line of the Messiah. Her fortune is totally reversed. Instead of dying with the enemies of God’s people, she becomes one of them. Then, we meet Achan in chapter seven of Joshua. He’s a flesh and blood Israelite. But he betrays the trust given to him and steals at the battle of Jericho to advance his own position among his people. He is caught, and his position is reversed. Instead of celebrating the victory with God’s people, he is among the enemies of God who died at Jericho. His position was totally reversed. Another biblical example is Esther. Chapter two of the book shows her as an orphaned alien who is elevated to queen of the Persian empire. Notice that the enemy of God’s people in that story is a man named Haman, who attempts to have Mordecai hung on a scaffold he had built specifically for that purpose. Haman went from prized royal advisor to executed traitor.
For those of us who often feel weak and powerless in a world that seems so strong and competent, we can find real hope in the fact that God delights to bring down the high and raise up the low. God seems to love reversing situations that appear to be irreversible. He did it with Abraham! He did it with Isaac. He did it with Jacob. He did it with Joseph. He did it with Moses. He did it with Jesus at the resurrection. He will do it for you and me also. He promises us the same kind of reversal of fortune in that we, too, will have our death reversed and joined together with Jesus for eternal life. This is going to be the greatest reversal of fortune for those who believe in Jesus. “Though he was dead,” Jesus said of Lazarus, “Yet shall he live.”