How Not to Display Accurate Empathy I

How Not to Display Accurate Empathy I
1 Samuel 1:1-8

I don’t very often shout out loud when I read an e-mail, but I did so a few weeks ago when a message came from a friend of mine who had returned to a country in Asia two or three years ago. She and her husband had been longing to have children, but she had been unable to conceive, and it had begun to seem that she never would. It seemed a shame not least because she is one of the most loving and caring people I know; I could imagine what a great mother she would be. I know more than one lovely loving couple who for different reasons don’t want to have children but who (I suspect) will come to be loving parents if it happens, but they don’t feel incomplete without having a baby. This other couple was very keen to do so. They had got a dog, which can sometimes be a way of making up a little for the spouse or baby that it seems you are not going to have. Then the e-mail came saying she was two months pregnant! So I shouted out loud. She is now four or five months along, so it looks as if it will all work out fine...