September 15, 2019: Day 1 – I Samuel 1

Hopefully you can read this map which I took a  picture with my phone from my Bible.  I couldn’t find anything similar online.  Amazing!  Anyway, this is where we find ourselves as we begin I Samuel.  It is a great book of the Bible with amazing stories.  Guess who the protagonist is?  Most of us would say Samuel, and we would be right, up to a certain point, but his life ends in chapter 25.  We have Samuel but we also have the great kings of Israel as well as we make our way through  both I Samuel and II Samuel.  So, hang in there as we make our way through this very easy book of the Bible to read, and yet it is so full of God’s evident presence.

In chapter 1 the scene is set as it often is with a woman whose husband loves her and yet she is barren and is not able to have children.  Keep in mind that bearing children back in that day was considered a blessing from the Lord, so the converse was also true.  If you were barren and not able to have children then for some reason the Lord was holding back His hand.  Hannah, one of the two wives of Elkanah, goes to the temple to pray and ask that the Lord would rid her of her barrenness.  She is so emotional and distraught in her prayer that the high priest of the time, Eli, thought she was drunk.

As he chastises her she explains her predicament and promises that if the Lord were to answer her prayer that she would bring him back and pledge him to the temple for the rest of his life as a Nazirite.  Okay, what is a Nazirite?  Remember Samson?  He was a Nazirite.  They are pledged to the work of the Lord and they do not drink wine or any alcohol and they do not cut their hair.  All of that was a sign of their devotion and dedication to the Lord.

As we often see in the Bible stories Hannah conceives and as a result she brings her son Samuel to the temple and leaves him there.  Okay moms, how are you feeling about now?  Does this sound like something you could do with a son that you and your husband had a very difficult time in conceiving and you just never know if he will be the one and only son that you will ever have?  Yeah, it’s not that easy is it?  But Hannah once again gives us such an incredible picture of the faithfulness of these somewhat nameless characters who give so much and yet are credited so little for what they did.  She really strikes me as someone who even more than Mary was faithful in what the Lord gave to her to the point where she was willing to completely give it up because God had fulfilled His promise.  

What a great example of following through on our part of the agreement that we will love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and body…and children.  Elkanah disappears and Hannah emerges as a giant of the faith.