It was a bit after 3 a.m. and I was weary from fighting to sleep … and losing the fight. I rolled over and switched on the lamp. The Hemingway story, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” ended with the great lines, “After all, he said to himself, it’s only insomnia. Many must have it.” I have taught that story again and again to students, but this night I felt like the student rather than the professor.

I picked up my laptop to prepare for teaching fellow soldiers today. I made a cup of coffee. I checked my email. In my email inbox, one in particular stood out. It was from my friend D. He had written a tender email about Hannah’s prayer from 1 Samuel 2. As usual, he wrote of longing to have a heart for God the way that Hannah did. I wrote him back and commended his words and theology. Indeed, Hannah’s prayer is one of the most beautiful and stirring prayers in Scripture.

I went to my desk and opened my Bible to 1 Samuel 2, and read Hannah’s prayer. It has so many memorable lines like this one: “He [the LORD] will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness, for not by might shall man prevail” (1 Samuel 2:9, ESV).

I read the prayer again. And again. And again.

I resolved to stay up. There was no need to try to wrestle among the sheets any longer this night. Just embrace the reality that it’s not meant for me to rest this night. Perhaps it’s because I was to read that email from my friend D. Perhaps it was to drive me to Hannah’s prayer, too, in order to have a heart like Hannah and like Samuel, her child of promise, a type of the Christ who would come in the New Testament era. Perhaps it was to prepare me for teaching my fellow soldiers in a few hours.

Perhaps it was just to have me quiet, with my face in my Bible, listening to God’s words inscripturated there. “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4, ESV).