{"id":4404,"date":"2026-03-18T01:11:50","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T01:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/?p=4404"},"modified":"2026-02-28T19:14:42","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T19:14:42","slug":"hannah-from-barren-to-breakthrough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/hannah-from-barren-to-breakthrough\/","title":{"rendered":"Hannah \u2013 From Barren to Breakthrough"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>Wednesday, March 18<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hannah \u2013 From Barren to Breakthrough<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly. <\/em>\u2013 1 Samuel 1:10, NIV<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We first find mention of Hannah in 1 Samuel 1. The narrator doesn\u2019t pull any punches: Elkanah, Hannah\u2019s husband, has two wives, one who has already given him children and another who hasn\u2019t. Many speculate that Elkanah first married Hannah, but after she was unable to produce children, he married another woman named Peninnah. Peninnah and Hannah\u2019s relationship wasn\u2019t great; Peninnah \u201cprovoke her grievously to irritate her\u201d (1 Samuel 1:6).<\/p>\n<p>In the First Book of Samuel 1, her flaw wasn\u2019t sin, it was sorrow. Her mess was years of unanswered prayer. But instead of turning bitter, she turned prayerful. She poured out her soul before the Lord. God answered her with a son Samuel who would become a prophet and leader over Israel. Her pain produced a prophet.<\/p>\n<p>No one knows how long Hannah and Elkanah had been trying to have children, but it\u2019s long enough for the narrator to inform us that years have gone by and Peninnah has successfully borne both sons and daughters (v. 4). Year after year, the family made the trip to Shiloh to be able to worship God. And year after year, Hannah is left childless while her rival had more children. On this particular journey, we see Hannah so despairing that she was weeping and unable to eat (v. 7).There is no doubt the weight of this emptiness weighed on Hannah\u2019s heart. 1 Samuel 1:10 describes it this way \u201cI<em>n her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly.\u201d \u00a0<\/em>Hannah carried the silent weight of infertility in a culture that measured a woman\u2019s worth by motherhood. Sometimes God allows deep longing to birth deeper purpose.<\/p>\n<p>In this Year of Purpose, your tears are not wasted. They are watering the future harvest.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Prayer for today: <\/strong><em>Lord, meet me in my anguish. Where I feel empty, fill me with hope. Teach me to pour out my heart before You instead of closing it off. Bring breakthrough in Your time, and let my answered prayer serve a greater purpose than I imagined. In Jesus\u2019 name, Amen.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday, March 18 Hannah \u2013 From Barren to Breakthrough In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly. \u2013 1 Samuel 1:10, NIV\u00a0 We first find mention of Hannah in 1 Samuel 1. The narrator doesn\u2019t pull any punches: Elkanah, Hannah\u2019s husband, has two wives, one who has already given him children and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4405,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4404\/revisions\/4405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}