She came to the house of God with her heart smashed into bits. Her dreams had been crushed. Words of bitter cruelty had been hurled at her. And in those deep crevices of one's heart, where no human understanding penetrates, the pain finally rolled out. At the throne of God, with tears pouring down her cheeks, Hannah, we are told: "spoke from her heart." While Hannah had tried to share her hidden secrets, as author Mary Dixon Thayer so correctly notes, "Always there remain portions of our heart into which no one is able to enter, invite them as we may." Hannah had tried to explain how she felt. She tried to tell her husband who rebuffed her with, "What's the matter with me? Am I not good enough for you?" She even tried, on an annual basis, to express the loneliness and the sorrow that scraped the tender lining of her heart before her God at the sacred setting of Shiloh - but to no avail. Accused as a drunk she found herself in the uncomfortable place of defending herself from false accusations. So I ask you, had you been Hannah, what would you do? With the shreds of a broken heart in your hands, it might have been the easiest thing to recoil from anything and everyone who had the slightest potential for further damaging what was so wounded. Many times, in all our lives, there are people, who through the cruelty of their actions and words so deeply wound our sensibilities, we no longer have the strength or the will to plod ahead. The author, Henry David Thoreau said that most of us live lives of "quiet desperation." And it is in this quietness where many choose to reside, never speaking, never sharing, and never living. For Hannah, life within the walls of a broken heart wasn't any life at all and so, in spite of the hurt and pain, she went to her Father, again and again. And the Bible says she, "spoke from her heart." How I love those words. Hannah didn't pull out some book of transcribed prayers or prepared text, instead she went into those gashed chasms where no one dared enter and she laid open every pain, no matter how desperate it was or apparently inconsequential it might seem to another human being. And she asked for help from the "One" she knew she could count on. Like Hannah, the Psalmist David spoke from his own shattered heart when he cried out, "O God, You are my God, earnestly will I seek You. My inner self thirsts for You...so I have looked upon You in the sanctuary to see Your power and glory." (Psalm 63: 1, 2). Just as Hannah came to Shiloh, so David came to his Father's dwelling place hunting and longing for that "Balm in Gilead." As he spoke from his heart to his loving Father, he was given a glimpse of the glory and power that as he so eloquently penned, "Satisfies us with marrow and fatness" (Psalm 63: 5). I do not know what pain is wrecking havoc in your world today. I have no idea what sorrow is tearing your heart apart. However, I do know that when we speak from our heart to our Father, we will find healing for our hurting and hope in place of all our dashed dreams. In the comforting words of the prophet Isaiah, "He has sent Me to bind up and heal the brokenhearted" (Isaiah 61: 1). "The poor broken-hearted, going into (her) bedroom, bends (her) knee, but can only utter (her) mournful cry in the language of sighs and tears. Look! That groan has made all the harps of heaven thrill with music; that tear has been caught by God, and put into a vase made especially for tears, to be perpetually preserved." C. H. Spurgeon "Thou tellest my wanderings; put Thou my tears into Thy bottle; are they not in Thy book?" Psalm 56: 8 King James Version