4/11/2010 8:13 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time Focus: A distinguished son
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: 1 Sam. 1:19-28
Message of the verse: “19 ¶
Then they arose early in the morning and worshiped before the LORD, and
returned again to their house in Ramah. And Elkanah had relations with Hannah
his wife, and the LORD remembered her. 20
It came about in due time, after Hannah had conceived, that she gave
birth to a son; and she named him Samuel, saying, "Because I have asked
him of the LORD." 21 Then the man
Elkanah went up with all his household to offer to the LORD the yearly
sacrifice and pay his vow. 22 But Hannah
did not go up, for she said to her husband, "I will not go up until the
child is weaned; then I will bring him, that he may appear before the LORD and
stay there forever." 23 Elkanah her
husband said to her, "Do what seems best to you. Remain until you have
weaned him; only may the LORD confirm His word." So the woman remained and
nursed her son until she weaned him. 24
Now when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, with a
three-year-old bull and one ephah of flour and a jug of wine, and brought him
to the house of the LORD in Shiloh , although
the child was young. 25 Then they
slaughtered the bull, and brought the boy to Eli. 26 She said, "Oh, my
lord! As your soul lives, my lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you,
praying to the LORD. 27 "For this
boy I prayed, and the LORD has given me my petition which I asked of Him.
28 "So I have also dedicated him to
the LORD; as long as he lives he is dedicated to the LORD." And he
worshiped the LORD there.”
There are
times when I read the Scriptures that I am kind of surprised at how fast the
details of a life are given. The case
here is of Samuel and how this one short paragraph tells of probably his life
from conception until he was probably three years old, however some would
probably say he was older for Isaac was older when he was weaned from Sarah.
Probably
Elkanah is the one person in this story who does not get all of the credit that
he deserves by the people who read it or some of the commentaries that are
written about this story. There is a law
in the OT that says if a husband hears a vow that his wife makes and does not
agree with it then he can cancel the vow, and for sure Elkanah did not cancel
this vow. Of course all of this vow and
these circumstances in the control of The Lord of Hosts, who is mentioned for
the first time in this book of the Bible.
One more thing about Elkanah was that he too had to give up this little
boy to the Lord and I am sure that it was hard for him to do this. Samuel was given as a living sacrifice to the
Lord which is spoken of in Romans 12:1.
After
Samuel was weaned he was taken to Shiloh and given to the Lord and was put in
the presence of Eli who would be judged for the evil that his sons have been
doing and he not stopping it. Hannah
reminded Eli of who she was and the vow that she made and the boy that she was
offering to the Lord and so this young man will be used of God to accomplish
His will in the nation of Israel
The name Samuel
means “ask of God.” It breaks down like
this: “The Hebrew word sa-al means ‘asked,’ and sama means ‘heard,’ and el is one of the
words for God.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I would suppose that the lesson that I
learned for this section is the role that Elkanah played in this story so far
and that was how he yielded to the vow that his wife Hannah had made. There are times when I need to follow this
and this is one of the things that I am working on, but still need the grace
from the Lord to do better.
My Steps of Faith for
Today:
- Trust the Lord to show me the times when I need to submit to the will of my wife without making a fuss.
4/11/2010 9:15 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment