1 Sam. 2:10

"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" 1 Sam. 2:10

Some young people I know are "gamers." They play computer games until they have mastered every level. I, on the other hand, am not a gamer. Oh, I have tried my hand at a few. I bought a full version of "Age of Empires" and never discovered how to get anywhere. I bought "Bass Master Pro" and manage to catch a few fish if I stay in the same area. I bought a copy of a flight simulator and crashed the plane more often that I manage to land it. If there is a contest between me and a game, the game will win and I will be shattered. If my emotions were fragile, I could easily be crushed by that failure. Fortunately, I am a bit stronger than that, and I generally avoid playing that type of computer game.

There is one game that I do not intend to play, but millions of people around the world play it every day. That game is called, for lack of any other name, "Contending with God." The game is played this way: God issues a command, clear and simple. It could be something as simple as "Don't lie." The human player asks the question, "Why not?" and the game is on. The human is confronted with a situation in which the truth would hurt a bit. He is tempted to fabricate a total lie, but this would be obvious and result in losing the game. Instead, the player tries to tell as little of the truth as possible and still get away with what appears to be total truth. If he fools the human judges, he wins. The game continues until the player has mastered the "little white lie." He then takes greater risk, making his "white lie" into a "deception." The goal here is to make the judges believe that the deception is the same as the truth. If the player succeeds, he moves to the next level. He tries to tell an "outright lie." This is a bald-faced attempt to totally deceive the judges into believing that the player is telling the truth when there is absolutely no truth at all in the fabrication. If the player succeeds at this level, the judges declare him the winner and certify that there is nothing in this world that is not available to him.

There is only one problem. The ultimate judge is God, the one who issued the original command. It seems that God's standard of truth is "Absolute Truth." When God takes out the ruler of Absolute Truth and measures the player's fabrications, the player always falls short. He loses, game over, reset and try again, and fail again, or ask the Judge for forgiveness. If the player keeps trying again and continues to lose, he ultimately is crushed.

Hannah knew the end result of contending with God. The opponent is shattered, crushed, totally defeated. But the player who chooses to give up and rely on God's mercy lives a complete, whole life, he wins!

If you are playing this game with God, STOP! You can't win. Give up before it is too late. Stay away from the game. You don't want to be crushed and shattered as a glass dropped on a tile floor. Call upon the Ultimate Judge to be a winner. Hallelujah, Amen and Amen.