1 Samuel 1

To someone who's never been to a Disney park before, I imagine that Disneyland in California and Walt Disney World in Florida seem like similar places. Although some of the rides (which Disney calls "attractions") are similar or even identical, the two resorts are, in fact, very different places. The tl;dr is that Disneyland is tiny and Disney World, despite having only two more Disney parks that Disneyland, is gargantuan. (Shameless plug: Read my voluble thoughts on Disney World here.) When Walt Disney planned Disney World, he secretly bought up acres of land in Florida (an area the size of San Francisco) to surround his idyllic kingdom (never mind the crocodiles and mosquitos). Because once Disneyland opened, suddenly, all these seedy hotels, restaurants, and tourist traps sprung up around it.  The area got just a little more respectable when the second park, California Adventure, opened up in 2001, but the Disneyland Resort is still a fantastical theme park surrounded by chain restaurants and hotels. And because fast food chains can become magnets for drunks and reprobates, I imagine it's not exactly a rare sight to see a hammered fellow ambling outside the bag-check to the Happiest Place on Earth.

Unlike Disney parks, God's temple really is a reverent edifice worthy of respect. And yet here at the tail end of the period of the judges, it's apparently not an uncommon for drunks to wander into the Lord's house. So when Hannah fervently and earnestly prays for God to give her a son, the priest Eli sees her lips moving and thinks that she's just another one of those irksome inebriates. Notably, though, he doesn't ask her to leave; he just tells her to put away her wine (verse 14).

God does open Hannah's womb, which is interesting because God was the one who closed it in the first place (verse 6). Why He did so, spurring Hannah's husband's other wife (boy, that sounds odd) to provoke her for years and years to the point of tears (verse 7), I'm not sure. Maybe it was timing--He allowed Samuel to be born when he was so that he could help guide Israel in establishing its monarchy. And Eli's little misunderstanding was the first hint of a new age in Israel's history, an age that would bring the nation to the height of its power. Not that it was a perfect age, but a period in Israel's history that yielded the author of Psalm 23 couldn't have been all that bad.