What Is the Christian Mother’s Best Kept Secret?
BY CAMPBELL MARKHAM | What can we learn from Hannah’s story in the first book of Samuel about how a mother can best love her children?
Here comes another Mother’s Day, a little tornado of flowers, chocolates, breakfasts in bed, brunches, cards, and children’s gifts that display more love than artisanship. We hope that not too many mums are left with too much washing up from said feasts, not too much sweeping up of flower petals, crumbs, and glitter.
For my part, I could not think of a better way of honoring our mums than by walking with you in the glade of the Bible’s most moving and beautiful depiction of motherhood, that of Hannah in the first book of Samuel:
There was a certain man of Ramathaim-zophim of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Elkanah the son of Jeroham, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zuph, an Ephrathite. He had two wives. The name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other, Peninnah. And Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. (1 Sam. 1:1-2)
Hannah is childless because “the Lord had closed her womb.”
A few words paint a portrait of deep sadness. We all know couples who would love to have children but who cannot. We must never forget them—their quiet, prolonged, and often lonely grief.
Now this man used to go up year by year from his city to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh, where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the Lord. (1 Sam. 1:3)
We are about to see two contrasting families: the family of Eli, whose sons used their priestly post to slake their greed and lust, and the family of Elkanah, whose son Samuel would be one of Israel’s greatest prophets…