What is the Christian Mother's Best Kept Secret?

A beautiful Bible portrait teaches us that a mother loves her children best when she doesn’t love them most.

Here comes another Mothers’ Day, a little tornado of flowers, chocolates, breakfasts in bed, brunches, cards, and children’s gifts which display more love than artisanship. We look forward to thick coloured cards strewn with Clag, cellophane, glitter, toothpicks, and portraits of mum as a big smiling face with arms coming out the side (where the ears are supposed to be) and legs poking out the bottom (where the neck is supposed to be). Eat your heart out Picasso.

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 honouring our mums in 2020 than by walking with you in the glade of the Bible’s most moving and beautiful depiction of motherhood, that of Hannah in 1 Samuel.

1 Samuel 1:1-2  There was a certain man from Ramathaim, a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. He had two wives; one was called Hannah and the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had none.

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.

1 Samuel 1:3 Year after year this man went up from his town to worship and sacrifice to the Lord Almighty at Shiloh, where Hophni and Phinehas, the two sons of Eli, were priests of the Lord.

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. Samuel, though, as a father, would have his own flaws…

1 Samuel 1:4-8 Whenever the day came for Elkanah to sacrifice, he would give portions of the meat to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters. But to Hannah he gave a double portion because he loved her, and the Lord had closed her womb. Because the Lord had closed Hannah’s womb, her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her. This went on year after year. Whenever Hannah went up to the house of the Lord, her rival provoked her till she wept and would not eat. Her husband Elkanah would say to her, “Hannah, why are you weeping? Why don’t you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?”

This all heightens the sadness. It was hard enough for Hannah to be barren, it was harder still when the rival wife mocked her. (Though the Old Testament shows polygamy, it never endorses it, and consistently portrays it as a tragic deterioration from God’s creation mandate, “the two will become one flesh.”) Hannah’s suffering was prolonged “year after year”, and her husband’s pathetic attempt to assuage her grief, “Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons,” shows that he just doesn’t get it.

Hannah is childless because “the Lord had closed Hannah’s womb.” It does not say that this was God’s punishment for sin. On the contrary, Hannah is shown to be deeply pious. Is Hannah’s barrenness from God’s general providence and governance of his creation? In this fallen world some couples have children, and some do not. Some live to old age, others die young. Some enjoy riches, others endure grinding poverty. Some never experience war, famine, disease, or natural disaster, and others live with all of these tragedies. In this fallen world everyone must suffer and die, and in God’s governance, for his own good purposes, some will suffer more than others. We must never thoughtlessly infer particular sin from pain, for as Jesus said of the man born blind, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3). Hannah’s barrenness was in any case a direct providence. God was working something special through her suffering.

1 Samuel 1:9-11  Once when they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on his chair by the doorpost of the Lord’s house. In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly. And she made a vow, saying, “Lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.”

Hannah shows where all grief must be directed, the person to whom all suffering must be expressed. She brought her bitter anguish and misery to the Lord. In your own suffering He will hear you. He may not give you what you ask for—as he did in this instance with Hannah—but he will always give what is best for you and most glorifying to him. Sometimes his best is a lifetime of unfulfilled dreams and hardships that draw out patient trust. We will have all eternity to enjoy the full joy and riches of his presence, no longer cramped and marred by the Fall.

Is Hannah's prayer a quid pro quo? “If you give me something, I’ll give you something.” No, it shows instead the heart of a woman painfully chiselled and shaped through years of deprivation. Prolonged anguish had driven her to own the truth that “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it; the world, and all who live in it” (Psalm 24:1). Perhaps if Hannah had borne children with ease she might have thoughtlessly viewed them as “my children.” Deprivation brought her to the conviction that she belonged to the Lord, and that any child of hers must also belong above all to the Lord. She manifests this conviction by pledging any son born to her to be a Nazirite, a person devoted especially to the Lord’s service and marked out as such by uncut hair and abstention from alcohol (Numbers 6).

1 Samuel 1:12-18 As she kept on praying to the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, “How long are you going to stay drunk? Put away your wine.” “Not so, my lord,” Hannah replied, “I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. Do not take your servant for a wicked woman; I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief.” Eli answered, “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.” She said, “May your servant find favour in your eyes.” Then she went her way and ate something, and her face was no longer downcast.

This is not the last time that prayers would be mistaken for inebriation! Samuel dovetails with Judges, when “Israel had no king, and everyone did as they saw fit.” Signs of Israel’s crumbling dereliction are seen everywhere: Hophni and Phinehas’s outrageous abuse, Eli’s sinful indulgence, the use of the Ark as a good luck charm, Israel’s naïve clamouring for a king, etcetera. Drunkenness in the sanctuary would have been no surprise. In fact Hannah’s childlessness is a metaphor for Israel’s spiritual barrenness.

Misunderstanding fades into a touching scene. A broken woman’s pathetic defence. A cynical old man’s heart melted, “Shalom, Go in peace.” Then, the dawn of hope.

1 Samuel 1:19-22 Early the next morning they arose and worshiped before the Lord and then went back to their home at Ramah. Elkanah made love to his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her. So in the course of time Hannah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, saying, “Because I asked the Lord for him.” When her husband Elkanah went up with all his family to offer the annual sacrifice to the Lord and to fulfil his vow, Hannah did not go. She said to her husband, “After the boy is weaned, I will take him and present him before the Lord, and he will live there always.” “Do what seems best to you,” her husband Elkanah told her. “Stay here until you have weaned him; only may the Lord make good his word.” So the woman stayed at home and nursed her son until she had weaned him.

This is no virgin birth. But Samuel will join the ranks of other children, significant in God’s salvation history, born to women whose barren wombs were healed by the Lord: Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Samson, and John the Baptist.

As soon as Samuel is weaned, somewhere between two and four years, maybe five, he is taken to serve the Lord as a priest. Hannah keeps her promise as soon as it was possible to do so.

The dedication is described in some detail:

1 Samuel 1:24-28 After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine, and brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh. When the bull had been sacrificed, they brought the boy to Eli, and she said to him, “Pardon me, my lord. As surely as you live, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the Lord. I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord.” And he worshipped the Lord there.

The parents’ generous offering reflected their great joy and thanks, and the chapter pinnacles with three powerful statements of a godly woman’s powerful devotion to the Lord:

“So now I give him to the Lord.” Literally, following Ellicott’s Commentary, Hannah says, “I will make him one asked of the Lord.” She had asked the Lord for him, the Lord had answered her prayer, and now she returns the “one asked for” entirely to the Lord.

“For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord.” This vigorously reinforces the first statement. Not only is Samuel given to the Lord, he is given “all the days that he lives.” The sacrifice of the young bull on the day of Samuel’s consecration mirrors Hannah’s complete, final, irrevocable sacrifice of her son to the service of the Lord. 

“And he worshipped the Lord there.” This was the purpose of his consecration, to give his life to worship the Lord God.

This chapter makes the heart ache to bursting. A precious woman weeps for years for a child. When finally she has him she nurses him for three or four years, and then adopts him away forever into the care and service of Israel’s priests.

She gives her most precious earthly possession, (Elkanah knew it wasn’t himself,) to the Lord. She consecrates her child to serve and worship the Lord.

If someone had expostulated with Hannah, “Don’t you love your child? You have given him away!” Hannah would have replied, “It is because I love my child that I have given him away. The best and greatest life Samuel can live is to serve and worship the Lord, and so I gladly consecrate his life to Him.”

This is not religious enthusiasm retarding maternal love. This is not cold theology growing a cold heart (“the deity owns my child therefore I must not”). This was the heat of a heart set on fire for the Lord, reflected back upon her child, making her love for her child burn even brighter.

The mother who idolises her children, who wraps up her hopes and happiness in her children, will subtly shape their lives to her own ends, and must inevitably be disappointed. Maternal love is thus maimed and distorted. Rather than being a beautiful end in itself, it becomes a means to less-than-beautiful self-love. In Disney’s version of the old tale, the false mother didn’t love Rapunzel. She loved herself and cared only for the immortality that Rapunzel could give her.

The greatest gift a mother can give her child is for she herself “to seek first the Kingdom of God.” In the pungent words of Jesus, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).

This Sunday, our mothers will receive the traditional lovely and motley offering of meals, cards, and gifts.  The Christian mother’s greatest gift in return is to love Christ first, and to love Christ most.

That was Hannah, whose love for Christ gave birth to her fierce and fiercely ordinate love for her son. 

A mother loves her children best when she doesn’t love them most.

Photo by Xavier Mouton Photographie on Unsplash