Hannah's prayer was desperate and specific. She didn't pray vague prayers in the temple. She prayed with tears, with anguish, with her whole body engaged in the asking. And when Samuel is born, she recognizes that his very existence is an answer to prayer. That sound in his name - Shem-uel - 'God has heard' - is a memorial to the prayer.
What strikes me is how Hannah doesn't keep Samuel for herself. She prayed for a son with her whole being, suffered through infertility and a rival wife's contempt, finally got her miracle - and then she gives him back to God. She keeps her vow. She brings the child to Eli in the temple, and he stays there. She visits him once a year. That's not the ending we'd write. We'd write: she got her miracle and they lived happily ever after.
But Hannah understood something about prayer that changes everything. You don't pray for things to control them or possess them. You pray to position yourself before God's will. She prayed for a son not ultimately so she could be a mother, but so that she could offer something to God. That's why God could trust her with what He gave her. I've struggled my whole Christian life with whether my prayers are really about loving God or just about getting what I want. Hannah's example - keeping her vow even when it costs everything - keeps challenging me to examine my own motivations.
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