“Count not thine handmaid for a daughter of Belial: for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken hitherto” (1 Samuel 1:16).
One of the characteristics of “ungodly sinners” in Jude 16 is that they are “complainers”. Their expression of discontent harmonizes with the attitude of those in “last days”, “covetous…” and “…unthank-ful” (2 Tim 3:2). The soul without Christ may very likely be known to complain and certainly, as yet, is not one to comply with God’s will. Yet the text that introduces these thoughts speaks of Hannah’s “complaint” spoken to God.
This dear soul, if anyone ever did, had cause to be discontented with her circumstance of life. Though favored of her beloved husband and faithful to her God, she had after so many years remained childless. When Eli the priest mistook her inaudible prayer for drunkenness and rebuked her, she confessed that she spoke only from “a sorrowful spirit.” Her complaint was simply the expression of the burdened musings of her soul. Her very presence at “the house of the LORD” shows that despite the “bitterness of soul” (v 10), she was still compliant to the revealed purposes of God for His own. And as the occasion of this visit to Shiloh concludes, we read that she “went her way …and her countenance was no more sad.”
The Lord preserve us from the character of “ungodly sinners.” Our God is well able to hear the honest “complaint” of our hearts when He sees the desire to remain “compliant” to His ways.
“Like as a father pitieth His children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear Him. For He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust. … But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children’s children.” Psalm 103:13, 14, 17.
