AP

1 Samuel 1:24-28  After [Samuel] was weaned, [Hannah] 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 worshiped the LORD there.

As I read this account for the umpteenth time in my many Bible-reading years, my mind went to another journey made by a parent with a deeply loved and miraculously-provided child.

As part of my training for the ministry in the 1970s, I wrote a 14,000 word thesis on Genesis 22, and that experience made a very deep impression on me as I made the journey with aged Abraham and young Isaac to Mount Moriah for the dreaded sacrifice.  Because of the extremely miraculous conception of Isaac to a couple who had longed and prayed for him for so long, and were well beyond child-bearing age, the thought of a devoted father losing his precious son would have been unbearable.  And being reminded of this in my present circumstance, when all my children are so very precious to me, has really roused all my deepest feelings once again.

I think of the wonderful years while Hannah was cuddling and breast-feeding Samuel, her beautiful gift from the LORD, and, in so doing becoming more and more attached to him, and I reflect on the immense emotional pressure she would have been under to engage in a bit of casuistry to convince herself of all the valid reasons why it would be better not to carry through on her initial promise to dedicate him wholly to the LORD.  In my 1970s Exit Thesis I imagined the conversation between God and (the battle that would have been going on in Abraham’s mind) going something like this: “Abraham (Here I am LORD), Take your son (Ishmael is my son), Your only son (For 13+ years, Ishmael was my only son), Whom you love (O I really love Ishmael), Isaac (?!?#*?!), and go to the region of Moriah [and] sacrifice him there as a burnt offering”.

What a powerful example both Hannah and Abraham (and, I guess, also Elkanah and Sarah) have given to us of faithfully carrying through on promises to God regardless of the cost.  And, while I am struggling with this, I am also being reminded of what it means to me that my loving Heavenly Father faithfully carried through on the promise he gave to Adam & Eve, to Noah, to Abraham-Isaac-and-Jacob, to Moses, to David, to Isaiah, and to countless others in the Old Testament, when he “gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”.  “O Jesus I have promised to serve thee to the end – be thou for ever near me, my Master and my Friend” (John Ernest Bode).  “Be still, my soul, thy Jesus can repay, of his own fulness, all he takes away” (Katharina von Schlegel).

– Bruce Christian