The Song of the Turned-Around World

(1 Samuel 2:1-10)

Hannah stood in God's house with a baby in her arms. This was Samuel, the boy she had begged God for, the answer to the prayer she had prayed without a single sound. For a long, long time she had felt forgotten, like the last little stone at the bottom of the river, where no one ever looks.

But God saw her. God always sees the ones the world looks past. And now her empty arms were full.

So Hannah sang, and this is her song.

"My heart is glad, so glad, in God.
He lifted me when I was low.
He heard me when I was small.

For our God is not like the world.

The world says the strong ones win.
But God says, no.
He opens the hands that grabbed too much.
He fills the hands that were empty.

The proud puff up and stand so tall.
God gently sets them down.
And the little ones, the bent-down ones,
he lifts them up like a crown.

The hungry, who had no bread at all,
he sits at a heaping table.
And the ones who were so full, so full,
go away still looking for more.

He raises the poor from the dust.
He lifts the forgotten from the ashes.
He seats them beside the kings.

For the world stands one way,
but God is turning it,
turning it,
turning it
right-side up."

Hannah sang about a world flipped over, where the last become the first, where the smallest are the most loved, where the ones who thought they had everything find their hands are empty, and the ones who had nothing find their cups spilling over.

And it would not be the last time someone sang that song.

Hundreds and hundreds of years later, in a little town no one cared about, another mother learned she was going to have a baby. Her name was Mary. And when she opened her mouth to sing, out came almost the very same song.

"He has lifted up the lowly," Mary sang. "He has filled the hungry with good things. He has brought the proud down from their high thrones."

It was the turned-around song again, only this time it was about her baby. A King who would be born in a barn, not a palace. A King who would sit with the lonely and reach out and touch the ones no one else would touch. A King who would go all the way down to the lowest place of all, so the lowest of all could be lifted up forever. His name is Jesus.

Hannah's song was a seed, and through all those hidden years it kept growing in the dark, down and down toward a manger.

So if you ever feel like the smallest one, the one nobody notices, remember Hannah. God has heard you. God is turning the whole wide world right-side up, and in his turned-around kingdom the littlest, most forgotten child is held the closest of all.

As for Hannah's boy, Samuel, he stayed to grow up in God's house. And one dark night, in that very house, someone was going to call his name.