One evening I was spending time with the Lord, and He gave me an increased revelation of what Hannah and similarly Rachel gone through in their barrenness.

but unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion; for he loved Hannah: but the LORD had shut up her womb.

1 Sam 1:5, KJV

The stories of Hannah and Rachel (in Gen 29-30) are similar, and they are about barrenness of the womb.

However, lessons learnt here can be generalised to other areas of our lives where we face barrenness.

Let us now look at what they went through.

Firstly, none of them expected this barrenness would befall them. They were taken by surprise.

We see for Rachel God closed her womb, because of Leah’s sake that she was hated.

Now, sometimes God acts in such way, but not all the time.

Perhaps, He was compassionate on Leah how she was marginalised.

However, as for Hannah, there was no reason the Bible provides why God shuts her womb.

The reason can only be found in God, because He is not an arbitrary / random God. Everything He does, has a reason.

So likewise, sometimes God has His own reasons why He withholds certain things from us.

And we are not in a position to question Him in a challenging manner, e.g; why must it be like this, why did it not happen like that instead.

In the case of Hannah / Rachel, we did not see them questioning God on the reason why He closed their womb too.

In fact God challenged Job, asking him where he was when He laid the foundations of the earth (Job 38:4).

Because his friends were all trying to rationalise the reason for Job’s unexplained suffering, where he lost everything.

But we should never question God even in our predicament, because He knows what His doing, and why He put us in this situation.

Instead ask God: Lord what is it that You want me to learn as I go through this?

The next lesson we can glean from Hannah / Rachel’s barrenness is although they faced intense humiliation and social stigmatisation, they did not complain like the Israelites.

Now, back in the days of Hannah / Rachel, not being able to conceive and have children, was a big thing in the eyes of society.

You will be looked down upon, by others; family, friends, relatives, colleagues, acquaintances, and people who come across and happen to know about your predicament.

And Hannah / Rachel had to handle all these pressure and expectations of the society, as they went through barrenness.

We see Rachel buckling a little under the pressure of comparison with Leah too, as she gave Jacob her handmaid and asking him to bear her a child (Gen 30:1-3).

However, firstly we should not compare ourselves with others. Because God has a different plan for everyone.

God is good, He knows that both Hannah / Rachel would very much long to have their own children, and possibly has compassion for them (please refer to Lam 3:22-24 article).

And sometimes, we just have to trust Him that He will provide for our needs.

You may refer to Joel 2:25 article, on how God will restore our lost years.

And secondly, we should not let others define who we are. Even they look down on us, or even what they think is not really that important.

Because our identity is sons and daughters of Christ, and that is how God sees us (2 Cor 6:18, Gal 3:26).

Don’t let your circumstances, or how others look at you, define who you are, and strip your identity and power as Christ’s beloved.

Now, we see that although Hannah / Rachel went through all this, they did not complain nor were they angry at God.

Instead we see them pleading and making their petitions to God, for a miracle to turn things around.

Hannah lifted up her voice in a bitter lament to God, crying her heart to God (1 Sam 1:10-11).

And similarly, Rachel had possibly been lamenting a lot too to God, for all those years she was unable to conceive. As we see God finally heard her later (Gen 30:22).

The Israelites however were different, their heart attitude was not right, as they murmured / complained. Which means they were angry at God for their hardships (Exo 15:24, Exo 16:2-3).

They blamed Moses (and indirectly God) for bringing them out of Egypt, and actually wanted to go back to Egypt (Exo 16:2-3).

And they channeled their frustrations wrongly to Moses, instead of to God directly.

We can cry out to God for mercy in our situation and let Him know the pain we are going through.

However, it is not right to charge at God, or vent our frustrations on others, for what we are going through.

Finally, at the end of the story, we see God giving both Hannah / Rachel their long-awaited breakthroughs after all those years of tears, and their grateful hearts subsequently.

For Hannah, where she cried out to God bitterly in the temple, God remembered her and granted her request (1 Sam 1:17, 1 Sam 1:19).

For Rachel, God also heard and remembered her (Gen 30:22).

In both cases, we see God remembers them, and provides for their needs.

Indeed, He is compassionate (please refer to Lam 3:22-24 article).

And we can hence be assured too, that God has compassion and remembers us too, and our needs He will provide.

For Rachel, who has possibly cried out to God all those years, it seems as though God doesn’t hear.

But He is a seeing and hearing God, unlike the pagan idols who have eyes that do not see, and ears that do not hear, which God likens to the stubborn Israelites who indulge in idolatry (Isa 6:9).

(Israel has a long history with the sin of idolatry, since they came out of Egypt, please refer to Joel 2:25 article.)

Sometimes He just wants us to wait, and not that He is ignoring us.

Although waiting can admittedly be difficult, we need to trust God that He has the best plans and purposes for our lives (please refer to Psalm 73 article).

In fact, after Hannah / Rachel got their breakthroughs, we see them becoming very productive: bearing more children (Gen 46:19, 1 Sam 2:21).

Likewise, sometimes our many years of waiting on the Lord, might well spring up to be fountain tree, bearing many fruits!