What to Expect When You’re NOT Expecting: Wrestles in Faith & Infertility

The Importance of Story:
Imagine if you will indulge me for a minute, a time long past, a time before smart phones and the internet, a time before electricity and printing presses. Imagine a time where the night was dark save for the stars above and the crackling campfire. Imagine the old and young of the tribe gathering around the firelight. Women quietly converse and gossip as mothers try to still their babies cries. The men laugh and tease each other over who is the best or strongest. The children, laughing and giggling, fidget and jostle in their seats waiting for it all to begin. Imagine finally as an old man or an old woman begins to speak and the noises of the tribe stills to hear the voice of the story teller …
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In ancient times, the story was a central part of the life of the tribe. These stories were the collection of the legends and history of the tribe. These stories gave a sense of belonging, showing the place of the tribe in relation to the Creator and to the world around them. The stories told the tribe who they were, where they had come from, what their forefathers and mothers were like, how they braved adversity, made mistakes, overcame fear, deal with loss, all to lead the tribe to this present place and time. The stories of the tribe captured the heart and culture of the people. The stories told the best and the worst of the people. They told the mistakes and tragedy of selfishness and pride and gave inspiration to call the tribe to bravery, love and sacrifice.

We, in the tribe of Christians, are no different. We have our stories, too. These are the stories that shape us and tell us who we are, and whose we are. These are the stories that tell us how we belong, where we fit in the grand story and call us from darkness to light. Our stories, we believe, are breathed by God (1 Tim 3:16) on the hearts of men & women like crystals of frost forming on chilled glass. His breath brings life and words spill in the blood & ink on hearts and lives and pages as stories are lived, told, written down and faithfully copied and retold by generation after generation after generation.

We in the tribe of Christians have the gift of a written tradition, a history on paper for all to read, but we should not forget the power and the essential place of the oral tradition, the telling of our tribe’s stories to each other. Without this, it is too easy to forget who we are and to forget that we are part of something much more than just us. The people of Israel are instructed to speak always of the stories of their people to their children (Deut. 6:5-9) and maybe part of this is to help them, and to help us to remember that these are not just history to memorize, theology to scrutinize, rules to moralize or knowledge to gather to make us feel smug and safe. These are stories of real people that lived and hoped, dreamed and loved, felt joy and sorrow, just as we do. These are stories to be shared, to be entered into. These are stories that shape us and show us how that we are not alone, but are surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1) of those who have gone before that continue to intercede for us and whose voices continue to speak to us pointing us to the Creator’s love.

Stories of Infertility:
It is with this in mind that I want to share three stories with you today, one of which is the story that Darlene and I find ourselves in. The common thread of these three stories is infertility; the inability to produce a child.

My wife, Darlene & I both hoped to marry and start a family in our twenties. But life had other plans and we didn’t meet until later in life and even then it took a while for us (mostly me) to get our love story sorted out. We have been married for a year and three quarters and so our infertility story is a short one compared to many but there is the ticking clock of age persisting an urgency of gloom that our chances of having a child are not so good. A little over a year into our marriage, we were able to get into the fertility clinic and have been undergoing a barrage of tests and retests to figure out what’s standing in the way of us being able to have children. In the early parts of the journey, Darlene was convinced that it was an issue with her body. But over time, the doctors have shown that I am the current primary barrier to children. I have no seed to sow. Either my body does not produce seed or there is a blockage that prevents seed from escaping. The doctors have not been able to tell. All the evidence though points to me being the problem.

Now before you tune out, as not all of you are struggling with infertility and may wonder how any of this applies to you, and where you find yourself, in this story, let me share a second story. This one comes from within our community. A good number of years back, we met on a Sunday like this one and the service ended with a time of ministry where people with a need for prayer were encouraged to come to the front and the rest of us were encouraged to come around those we felt led to pray for. I had no particular leading that day and so hesitated until most people were surrounded by others except for one couple. I went and joined them, and Paulina joined them as well. The couple explained that they were struggling with infertility and had been for quite some time and they wanted prayer for that. Paulina was excited by this as God often had called her to pray for couples facing infertility and many that she’d prayed for had given birth. While she prayed, I thought about how I should form my prayer & what I should say. In the thinking, my brain connected the dots of them being worship leaders and their life goal being that of producing praise to God. This connected me to the name ‘Judah’, which in Hebrew means ‘praise’. And so, when Paulina’s prayer finished, I began to pray with these words, “God, give them their Judah.”

Instantly the couple burst into tears. I was taken aback by this, but kept fumbling through the rest of the prayer. I have no idea what I said. Part of my brain was distracted trying to figure out what I’d said wrong that made them cry and wondering whether the tears were a good thing or not. When I finally stopped my feeble attempts at prayer, the couple paused and explained that whenever they as a couple talked of having a kid, they both really wanted a little boy, and the name they ached to give him was ‘Judah’.

So here they are, wrestling with the deepest ache of their heart & God gives a veritable stranger the words that they share in secret. Is this not a confirmation that God has heard the cry of their hearts and will send His answer? Is this not evidence that God is listening to them and will give them the desires of their heart? Well, yes, but the maddening part is that I think, though I’ve not kept in touch with this couple, is that they remain without a child to this day.

Jubilee:
God has given us a name, too. Long before meeting me, Darlene heard God, in his still, small voice tell her, “You can name her Jubilee”. As we were getting closer to being engaged, Darlene related this story to me. She felt this was God’s promise of a daughter. All of this sounded great to me as I’ve always wanted to have a little girl and the name Jubilee has both great Biblical significance for me and is the name of a favorite superheroine (who is also Chinese). So how cool is that that God would have things planned so well as to put Darlene & I together and give her a name for our daughter that appeals to my geek side, too.

You would think faith becomes easier with hearing God’s promises spoken to you. I’m not sure that it does. Both Darlene and I are haunted by phantom images of Jubilee; a million little hopes and dreams of what she’ll be like, who she’ll grow to be, the life we’ll share with her. We have fake ‘memories’ of future tea parties with her, walks in the park, teaching her, helping her grow. We are sort of creepy around every half-Asian/half-Caucasian person that we meet, old or young, as we stare at them and wonder if that’s what Jubilee will look like. Darlene has drawers full of clothes for Jubilee in ‘Jubilee’s room’ that should nearly cover her wardrobe until she’s ten. And with Darlene’s good tastes, she’ll be a very stylish little girl for all of those years and beyond. I’ve been thinking about what I’ll say to Jubilee on the big moments of her life; when she turns 13, on her graduation day, or, if I live that long, when I give her away in marriage.

A person’s mind plays tricks on them with God’s promises. We start writing stories of what we think it’s all going to look like and then live in this disappointment and ache as time slips by and the stories become further & further out of reach. Infertility makes you feel so powerless. There are options; In-vitro fertilization, adoption, sperm donors. All of these are miracles in their own right, but is choosing one of these the right choice or the wrong choice? Does picking one of these bring us closer to Jubilee or are we making Ishmaels instead of Isaacs? If we just wait will God bring her miraculously, or is the waiting killing our chances of holding her in our arms? In the end, whatever we throw our energy, hopes and money into, God is the author of life and in the end, no child will come to us unless He wills it. And yet with His promises, we think that it is His will. But if it is His will to bring Jubilee, then why isn’t she here?

Connecting our Stories:
This is the wrestle of infertility, of waiting for God’s promises to be born in us, that I wonder if, metaphorically at least, extends to more of us than just those of us hoping for a child. Madeline L’Engle describes art as a kind of immaculate conception; a place where God comes to us with His word and asks us to help give it flesh. In some ways then is not every place where God comes to us with His word spoken or promise given a place of waiting for His word, His promises, to be born in us? To be made manifest in our lives? And is not then, every place where we wrestle with NOT seeing His word fulfilled, His promises manifest, a place of this wrestle with infertility?

As you come here today, what is it that you ache for? What is it that God has spoken to you about? What is it that God has promised you in the secret places of your soul? Perhaps it is not the ache for a child that you wrestle with. Maybe it’s a step before that and you live in the ache of singleness where you feel like God wants you to find that special someone, but the days and years slip slowly by in solitary. Maybe you feel there is a promise of healing in your life and yet you wrestle with illness day in and day out. Maybe there is some hope, some dream, some word that God has spoken to you that remains unfulfilled. What is it that God wants to birth in you? What are the unfulfilled aches for this community? What is it that God wants to birth in us as a church community, a small part of the greater tribe, that remains only a distant promise? What longing for fruit of creativity, love, hope, forgiveness, new life, dreams haunts your every step and leaves your soul and body aching like a barren womb waiting that spark of life?

The Wrestle of Infertility:
A large struggle of faith is living with unknowns. I’ve heard it said that the opposite of faith is not doubt, it is certainty. If you have what you hope for, things like hope and faith are irrelevant because you have the certainty of it sitting right there before you. Faith must live with some degree of uncertainty for it to be faith. This is where the wrestle comes in and where it all makes no sense. God promises Abraham a son and then makes him wait until he’s 100 to give that son. There are countless examples in the stories of our tribe where God makes a promise and then life seems to go the opposite way and this wrestle of faith and ache goes on. This is the conflict in the story that drives the story forward. What’s at stake? Our hearts and minds, our lives, our very souls. This is the battleground where the great war of the ages is played out as we wrestle with the questions of who is God, who are we, can He really be trusted with our lives?

This wrestle of faith comes strongest in the places closest to our hearts. It is way easier to trust with the things we don’t really care about. It is excruciating to live through the ache of seeing the one thing we long for be so far away. The questions and doubts come of whether you’ve heard God at all or if you’re just making it up. Does God care? Is He listening? Is this a good thing to long for? Is this just selfishness or foolishness? Is this just a test? Is it all a cruel joke? Some days you feel like it would be better to just let go of all hope of what God’s promised. It’s then that the promise becomes more ball and chain than anchor point as you can’t abandon your ache to, if you can’t have you want, at least be less miserable. God has a way of keeping us stuck in our place of aching, our place of waiting for Him.

We try to keep our wrestles of faith private often, though it all has a way of coming out. The wrestle of infertility can be a very hidden journey where people aren’t aware of the pain you’re feeling. People can assume you’re happily being a Dual Income No Kids couple while really you’re dying inside. On the flip side, with all the testing, infertility becomes a very public journey as you’re poked, prodded and probed in all the private areas of your life. In the end, it’s the sorrow of the struggle that is tough to hide. You can only paint the clown smile happy mask on for so long before the cracks start to show through.

A Third Story: Hannah
And so into my wrestle with infertility, a third story, one from our greater tribe, has been working its way into my thoughts. This is the story of Hannah, from 1 Samuel 1:.

“Now there was a certain man of Ramathaim Zophim, of the mountains of Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. And he had two wives: the name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. This man went up from his city yearly to worship and sacrifice to the LORD of hosts in Shiloh. Also the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the priests of the LORD, were there. And whenever the time came for Elkanah to make an offering, he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and daughters. But to Hannah he would give a double portion, for he loved Hannah, although the LORD had closed her womb. And her rival also provoked her severely, to make her miserable, because the LORD had closed her womb. So it was, year by year, when she went up to the house of the LORD, that she provoked her; therefore she wept and did not eat. Then Elkanah her husband said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? And why is your heart grieved? Am I not better to you than ten sons?”

So Hannah arose after they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat by the doorpost of the tabernacle] of the LORD. And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the LORD and wept in anguish. Then she made a vow and said, “O LORD of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head.”

And it happened, as she continued praying before the LORD, that Eli watched her mouth. Now Hannah spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli thought she was drunk. So Eli said to her, “How long will you be drunk? Put your wine away from you!”

But Hannah answered and said, “No, my lord, I am a woman of sorrowful spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor intoxicating drink, but have poured out my soul before the LORD. “Do not consider your maidservant a wicked woman, for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief I have spoken until now.”

Then Eli answered and said, “Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition which you have asked of Him.”

And she said, “Let your maidservant find favor in your sight.” So the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad.

Then they rose early in the morning and worshiped before the LORD, and returned and came to their house at Ramah. And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife, and the LORD remembered her. So it came to pass in the process of time that Hannah conceived and bore a son, and called his name Samuel, saying, “Because I have asked for him from the LORD.”

Now the man Elkanah and all his house went up to offer to the LORD the yearly sacrifice and his vow. But Hannah did not go up, for she said to her husband, “Not until the child is weaned; then I will take him, that he may appear before the LORD and remain there forever.” So Elkanah her husband said to her, “Do what seems best to you; wait until you have weaned him. Only let the LORD establish His] word.” Then the woman stayed and nursed her son until she had weaned him.

Now when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, with three bulls, one ephah of flour, and a skin of wine, and brought him to the house of the LORD in Shiloh. And the child was young. Then they slaughtered a bull, and brought the child to Eli. And she said, “O my lord! As your soul lives, my lord, I am the woman who stood by you here, praying to the LORD. For this child I prayed, and the LORD has granted me my petition which I asked of Him. Therefore I also have lent him to the LORD; as long as he lives he shall be lent to the LORD.” So they worshiped the LORD there.”

Now there’s likely a lot to bring out of this story, but I wanted to focus on two main things that have been speaking to me from Hannah’s story.

Voices in the Place of Wrestle:
The first thing that sticks out for me in Hannah’s story is the voices that come to her in the middle of her wrestle with infertility.

Peninnah’s is the first voice that speaks to Hannah in this story. Hers is the voice of the ‘rival’, the voice that makes you feel like it’s all a competition. This is the voice that reinforces your fears and tries to tell you all the reasons why you’ve fallen short or are not enough or are not worthy to receive what God’s promised you. Sometimes the voice of the rival comes from without, but more often than not, the voice of the rival is the one that comes from within. In the middle of wrestling with infertility, we’ve found how easy it is to hear this voice. Because of my lack of sperm, I’ve got a lot of the voices of not enough ringing in my ears. There’s a lot of struggles with feeling like less of a man because I’m not able to produce. In the middle of this, every news of a friend’s pregnancy has the double whammy of reminding us that others are getting pregnant while we can’t and then we feel guilty for throwing a damper on the happiness of others. This is similar to the emotions that you go through when you’re desperate for a healing, miracle or answer to prayer and you sit in church and listen to someone go on and on about how God’s provided for them, or healed them, or gave them their miracle. It’s supposed to comfort and encourage you, but it feels like a knife in your gut that God is hearing others, but ignoring you.

The second voice that speaks to Hannah in her wrestle with infertility is the voice of Elkanah, her husband. This is the ‘well-meaning voice’. This is one of those lines in the Bible that shows you how real the stories are as well as how much of a sense of humour God has. Elkanah loves Hannah. He means well & everything in the chapter shows that he genuinely cares about her and is trying hard to help her. But like lots of husbands trying to help their wives through emotional places, he makes a boneheaded statement. Elkanah’s “am I not better to you than ten sons” genuinely means well, but I can just imagine Hannah’s response to this and I’m sure it wasn’t favorable.

The well-meaning voices definitely show up in the middle of the wrestles of waiting on God’s promises. I don’t know what it is, but I think we all have this sort of need to try to give advice. On one hand it’s good. It’s a genuine heart wanting to help ease or take away someone’s pain, but it’s so easy for this to cause more pain than it solves. Darlene was recently ‘encouraged’ by a friend that they were worried they wouldn’t be able to have their fourth child, but it worked out OK for them. Oddly enough this wasn’t so comforting as we’d be happy to just have our one little one. We’d think having three children was more blessing that we could ever hope for. There are so many anecdotes that people have to share about someone they knew who was struggling with infertility and then this or that happened and it all worked out. Honestly sometimes those stories do give a glimmer of hope, but they all ring a bit hollow as our story doesn’t seem to fit the pattern of someone else’s story. In the end, the well-meaning voices are giving pocket change to the destitute. What they need is someone to come alongside their journey to walk with them. What we give is a band-aid to make us feel good because we don’t invest the time to really be a part of their struggle.

The third voice speaking to Hannah is the voice of Eli. This is the voice of the church or of organized religion. At first Eli confronts Hannah assuming that she’s drunk and is ready to kick her out of the tabernacle. Why is it that it seems that for those with the deepest struggles of faith, those who wrestle in bitterness of soul, that the church is not a place a sanctuary as it should be, but a place where people jump to conclusions and expel those looking for a voice of comfort. If someone doesn’t stand in worship or says something that has some measure of doubt in it, we as the church often jump on them & try to ‘force convert’ them into pretending to be happy or to fall in line with good theology. The church is not a friendly place to question God or to express doubt. I think we worry sometimes in the church that our faith can’t handle disappointment, or that God is somehow offended by anything but unwavering trust. The stories of faith in the Bible pretty much without exception are lived by real people who waver and doubt and wrestle and falter and make mistakes. God is not scared of our doubts and wrestles. It’s too bad that we in the church are not more open to being a safe place for wrestles to be worked out.

Eli eventually gets it though, thanks to Hannah standing up for herself, which is amazing. Often those in bitterness of soul will be more prone to just walk away from a church that doesn’t embrace them in their struggle than to stay and talk it out. In the end, Eli’s kindest words to Hannah are, ‘May God give you the desires of your heart.’ May God answer your prayers. In the middle of our struggles isn’t that what we’re all most wanting to hear? A voice that tells us our desires aren’t so crazy or out of line? A voice that joins us in our ache and gives an ‘amen’ to watching and waiting for God’s answer our prayers?

The sort of fourth voice in this story is the voice of God. You’ll notice that God doesn’t say anything directly in Hannah’s story. He’s pretty quiet. Maybe He speaks through some of the other characters a bit. Maybe through the circumstances. But overall He’s pretty quiet.

Lessons on Stories:
The second area that’s been speaking to me out of Hannah’s story, and the final thing I want to talk about today, is the lessons that seem to be filtering out of this story for me. These are not silver bullet answers. These are not magic answers that explain it all or make the pain go away. I’m not sure there are any of those kind of answers and people telling you that there are those kind of answers are well-meaning voices at best, or they’re trying to sell you something. These ‘lessons’ for lack of a better word are more hints of heart posture. These are things to think about in the wrestle that maybe point you, or at least me, out of just focusing on the struggle and maybe looking for beyond to something more.

The first lesson that has come out of this for me has been that it’s not our story. In thinking about the story of Hannah, and Darlene and my story and stories in general, I’ve been just reminded again and again that we are not the central characters or our story. We think we are, but we’re not. We think we’re the central characters because it’s our life and that’s all we’ve known and we assume our life is meant for some purpose and so we try to be the protagonist, we try to be the main character and make choices, but in reality, that’s all foolishness. It’s not our story. The real story that’s going on is God’s story. We’re a part of that story, but not the centre of it. Hence what happens in the great story is more about advancing His narrative than it is about advancing our own. Our lives, even if we live for a hundred years, is maybe a sentence or two in the great story. We’d be lucky if our lives amount to a paragraph in comparison to His story that stretches across eternity. Realizing this brings a humility to my life and kind of takes the edge off my bitterness a bit. Realizing it’s His story reminds me again that He’s the Author and that He’s written some pretty amazing stories over the centuries and still is today. Seeing God as the Author of all helps me to relinquish my pen. It’s a place of salvation in many ways where I give up my vain attempts to write a good story and instead put my trust in Him that He’s writing the best story for our lives. He’s written a way better story than I ever could have in bringing me and my wife together. So maybe I can trust Him with the better story He has for our children.

The second lesson comes out of this one and it’s the realization that while none of us are the protagonist, we still play a pretty important role. We’re the romantic interest in the story, we’re the people the protagonist loves and lays down His live to defend and save. There is a great story that God is trying to tell that we are very much a part of, but we maybe don’t see this when we’re busy trying to write our story. I’m not sure we know how to write really good stories. In Darlene’s grade 2 class, she tries to teach her kids how to write good stories. As an example, one of her students had this story: “There was once a pencil and he wanted a friend. He found a piece of paper and they became friends. The pencil was happy. The pencil and the paper played ball.” This story has a happy ending & it looks like everything works out for the pencil and paper, but it’s not a ‘good’ story. It’s not a story we’re going to want to read, or tell around a campfire. The story is boring. But in so many ways this is exactly the kind of story I would write with my life.

In Hannah’s story, I wonder what would have happened if Hannah hadn’t wrestled with infertility? Would her story have still been a ‘good’ story? Would her story have even made it into our collection of stories? Sure maybe as one of the ‘begats’ somewhere but very few people pay attention to the ‘begats’. The story that Hannah would’ve written for herself, the story that maybe I’d write for Darlene and I, is that we have children, live a happy life, grow old and die somewhere later in life. Again, this story still has a happy ending, but it’s a bad/boring story without the conflict to create and move plot forward.

When you look at the greater story, maybe God needed a Samuel. Sure maybe there was someone else that could’ve done Samuel’s job, but let’s suppose for an instance that God needed this particular child with this particular story around his birth. If there was no wrestle for Hannah, if there was no place of risk, would she have given Samuel to the service of the Lord in the temple? If there was no Samuel, would there be anyone to anoint David as shepherd King over Israel? If there was no David, would there be no line of David? Would there be no Joseph and Mary? Would there be no virgin birth and Emmanuel, God with us? When you look at 1 Samuel chapter 2, Hannah’s song of praise there has an uncanny resemblance to Mary’s song of praise in Luke chapter 1. The story of Hannah and the story of Jesus are very much linked together. Again, if Hannah had the story she wanted, maybe the greater story would have suffered or wouldn’t have happened. Hannah’s place of conflict and ache becomes in some ways an essential part of the greatest story ever told; the redemption of humanity by Jesus.

And this leads into the final sort of lesson/thought from Hannah’s story. It’s that the ache, the wrestle, the pain, it’s there for a reason. The ache is leading us somewhere. It is moving the plot forward and daring us to risk and to live in the better story. Seeing God’s silence in Hannah’s story reminds me that in the places of suffering, God doesn’t give answers, but instead joins us in the ache. He groans with us in the middle of our bitterness of soul with groanings that cannot be uttered. And in reality, our places of ache are really joining Him in His longings and aches. When I was single, I realized that my ache for a bride was this window into seeing the heart of Jesus and His incredibly deep longing for His bride. Wrestling with infertility now, I am beginning to see God’s ache for children. His longing for people to humble themselves and come as little children to accept Him as Father. His longing to birth out His plans, His kingdom, through us in this world.
We quote Psalms 37:4 a lot “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” We often interpret this as ‘Do some really churchy things for God and He will give you what you want.’, but I continue to grow to believe that this is maybe more that as we grow with God, He starts to give us desires, heart aches that look like the ache of His heart.

The things you ache for, the longings that you have, maybe they are not there because you dreamed them up. Often I think our deepest aches are there because we ache for the stuff of heaven. We ache for what God’s heart aches for and hence it’s worth hanging on through the bitterness and pain to continue to ache but to realize that our ache is a small fraction of God’s greater ache. God longs to bring a people of praise. God longs to bring Jubilee to this world. In Leviticus 25, the Jubilee was to be this little piece of heaven as a celebration of rest and restoration where the clock was reset, where everyone got to go home, where the slaves went free and lands were restored to their original owners. A time where your mistakes were forgiven and you got a chance to start over. It was this beautiful metaphor of God setting everything right, looking after His people and meeting all their needs. As far as I know, it was never celebrated and so God still waits and aches today for Jubilee. And now Darlene and I get to share this longing for Jubilee with Him as we try to figure out how our story & how her story fits into His greater story.

Conclusions:
So I’d like to leave you today with these thoughts and a few challenges/applications. First, listen to your ache. Don’t be afraid of what you ache for, but nurture it, pay attention, let it guide you and move your story forward. Second, be careful of the ‘voice’ you bring to the aches of others. Be a voice that joins their aching instead of making it worse. Finally, have courage to risk and to join God’s better story for your life and don’t be afraid to tell your story, especially the places of struggle. Others going through the same struggles as you need the comfort you have to bring as you show they are not alone in their ache.

To close, I’d like us to stand and read Hannah’s prayer together. It’s a song of putting things in their proper place; of righting wrongs, bringing justice. Most of all though, it’s a song of God’s sovereignty and that He has things under control.

“My heart rejoices in the LORD; my horn is exalted in the LORD. I smile at my enemies, because I rejoice in Your salvation. No one is holy like the LORD, for there is none besides You, Nor is there any rock like our God. Talk no more so very proudly; Let no arrogance come from your mouth, for the LORD is the God of knowledge; and by Him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty men are broken, and those who stumbled are girded with strength. Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, and the hungry have ceased to hunger. Even the barren has borne seven, and she who has many children has become feeble.

The LORD kills and makes alive; He brings down to the grave and brings up. The LORD makes poor and makes rich; He brings low and lifts up. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the beggar from the ash heap, to set them among princes and make them inherit the throne of glory. For the pillars of the earth are the LORD’s, and He has set the world upon them. He will guard the feet of His saints, but the wicked shall be silent in darkness. For by strength no man shall prevail. The adversaries of the LORD shall be broken in pieces; from heaven He will thunder against them. The LORD will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to His king, and exalt the horn of His anointed.”