Attitude Adjustment

I'm starting the book of 1 Samuel this week. Hannah is barren and Elkanah's other wife was tormenting her because of it.

And as he did so year by year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, so she provoked her; therefore she wept, and did not eat. Then said Elkanah her husband to her, Hannah, why weepest thou? and why eatest thou not? and why is thy heart grieved? am not I better to thee than ten sons?

So Hannah rose up after they had eaten in Shiloh, and after they had drunk. And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord and wept sore.
1 Samuel 1:7-10

Elkanah had gently reproved Hannah for her inordinate grief, and here we find the good effect of the reproof. She ate and drank, she did not harden herself in sorrow, nor grow sullen when she was reproved for it; but, when she perceived her husband uneasy that she did not come and eat with them, she cheered up her own spirits as well as she could, and came to table. It is as great a piece of self-denial to control our passions as it is to control our appetites.

It brought her to her prayers. It put her upon considering. "Do I well to be angry? Do I well to fret? What good does it do me? Instead of binding the burden thus upon my own shoulders, had I not better ease myself of it, and cast it upon the Lord by prayer?" Elkanah had said, Am not I better to thee than ten sons? which perhaps occasioned her to think within herself, "Whether he be so or no, God is, and therefore to Him will I apply, and before Him will I pour out my complaint, and try what relief that will give me." (Matthew Henry)

The practice of taking more than one wife was not God-intended. This was something the children of Israel took upon themselves and paid dearly for it. It's amazing to me the feelings run the same, whether it be thousands of years ago or today. I've been where Hannah is (not the barren, tormented by a second wife part) but her feelings--letting them get the best of you. It all comes back to God-centered and control through the Holy Spirit.