A Praying Mother | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 9, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 15.

A Praying Mother.

AS WE pass the story of Ruth, we come to a still more beautiful picture among the mothers in Israel. Among the Bible mothers there is none more eminent than the praying mother Hannah. She was the wife of Elkanah, a Levite, who brought up his family, amid a corrupt generation, to worship the Lord. "There are various intimations that, in the worst times, not a few families were to be found religious and well regulated, and which followed with exactitude all the requirements of the law." This happy state of Elkanah's household was doubtless due to the prayerful life of Hannah, who, in great wrongs and sorrows, or in love and joy, equally well knew the great blessing of going to the Lord in prayer. What a blessing to her husband and child was that praying mother? Prayer gave Israel a prophet, "who, having been the child signally granted in answer to her many prayers, was by her consecrated from the womb a Nazarite to Jehovah." Perhaps children were not given to Hannah, at first, so that her faith might be quickened in asking for a son.

Rich and happy in the possession of the gift for which she had asked, Hannah went not up before the Lord at Shiloh, until she could bring him the child again, that he might abide before him forever. As in the child of Elizabeth and the child Jesus, so the happy father and mother beheld every grace in the boy so early consecrated to God. Their faith was great. What an influence the faith of the parents had on the house of the Lord, when at last came the joyful day. The Lord, who had come down so often to meet Moses in the tabernacle, now came down to meet the little child. The hallowed associations and touching simplicity of the scene make us linger. "And they slew a bullock, and brought the child to Eli," and while they showed the sacrifice of Christ, who was once offered to bear the sins of many, little Samuel was taken before the high priest, who himself was a type of Christ, our great High Priest.

The mother stood at that very spot where she had stood in deep sorrow praying for a son, and now, with overflowing heart, presented that son to the Lord. Eli and the Levites listened to the tender and beautiful consecrating words with tearful eyes and joyful hearts, and they blessed her son, taking him up in their arms. How gladly they looked at the little Samuel while he worshiped the Lord there, as his mother had taught him? The other children who came to the feast had a beautiful example. And Hannah prayed and said: "My heart rejoiceth in the Lord!" With songs of thankfulness she returned to her home. What self-denial is shown by that father and mother in parting with a loved child of such tender years! How willingly the Lord accepted their child! He did not want them to wait till he was older in years and sin. The Lord said, as he said many years afterward, "Suffer little children to come unto me." It would have pleased him to have had all the little children of Israel thus lent to him.—Advocate.