HANNAH – VOICELESS PRAYER

Hannah…spake in her heart – 1 Samuel 1:13

“Strong, spiritual leaders usually have strong praying mothers. It is not mere coincidence that Bible history frequently records the ancestry of its great men. Praying Samuels come from praying Hannahs. Indeed, Samuel was the direct creation of his mother’s wordless praying. “The Lord remembered her; and in due time Hannah…bore a son, and she called his name Samuel, for…I have asked him of the Lord” (1:19, 20, RSV).

The traditional shame of her childlessness was crushing her spirit. Her rival, Elkanah’s other wife, “used to provoke her sorely, to irritate her” (1:6, RSV). Tried beyond endurance, she repaired to the temple and there poured our her soul to a listening God. The ageing priest, Eli, dozing on his seat “observed her mouth, and her voice was not heard” (1:13). Eli mistook her inarticulate grief for maudlin intoxication. “How long will you be drunken?” he chided her. She protested that her trouble was grief of heart. She was beside herself with the intensity of her supplication, a prototype of those for whom “the Spirit himself intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26, RSV). Some prayers affect us too deeply for formal articulation.

Hannah’s prayer was accompanied by a vow. “If thou wilt…remember…I will give” (1:11). She kept her promise, and as soon as Samuel was weaned, she presented him to the Lord for life. “And they worshipped the Lord there” (1:28). But now it is not wordless praying. “Fervent, passionate words flow out of her heart in an uncontrollable tide of adoration” (2:1-10). It was a rhapsody worthy of those of Miriam and Deborah and Mary. Small wonder then that Samuel’s early years spent in the company of his praying mother made him a man whose ministry was bathed in prayer.