Desperate Mothers

I hope this encourages moms who have to let their kids go to college. You might also feel as if you are floating them down a dangerous path in the world. But God will use other people to also care for your kids. God can use others besides us to help our children.

Another application we can get from Moses’ mother has to do with activities. Moses, like some kids, was blessed to be able to take part in more activities than other kids. Moses grew up in a palace. He was able to have his life enriched with archery, horseback riding, swimming, private tutors for math and science and language and arts. I mean, talk about enrichments. This guy had it all. But you know what? When God gives you more, God also wants to use you more. And God later on used all of Moses’ training and enrichments to benefit other people and to serve God. He became a servant leader. So, enrich your kids – with the boundary being not stressing them or yourself out - and also encourage them to be servant leaders with the abilities they have.

3. Hannah – desperate because she could not have a child

The third desperate mother we want to see is Hannah.

In 1 Samuel, we see a woman who was desperate because she could not have a child.

Some women just want to be a mom, but they can’t.

How desperate did Hannah get? When we turn to 1 Sam. 1:1-11, we read these words. [Read.]

Hannah was so desperate for a son that she prayed and she made a vow to God.

People do not make vows to God unless they are desperate. And Hannah had reached that point.

In OT times - much, much more so than today - for a married woman not to have a child was a source of shame. And others made them feel more miserable by their snide remarks and sometimes even by their good intentioned remarks.

But in Hannah’s case, there was also something else going on.

She was one of two wives to a man named Elkanah. We don’t have time to get into the argument about Bible characters having more than one wife, let’s just take it as a fact that there were people in the Bible who had more than one wife.

What was unusual in Hannah’s case, besides the desire to have a child, was the provocation of the other wife, who was a mother and had more than one child (1:2).

This other wife continued to provoke Hannah and taunt her.

Hannah already felt bad that the other wife had children, and she didn’t, but to add insult to injury, the other woman mocked her and constantly rubbed it in.

I suppose if that woman was a more compassionate person, she would not do this to Hannah, maybe she might even pray for Hannah to have a child, but because she was so spiteful and maybe because of the nature of having two wives, she was not going to offer any comfort to Hannah.

I believe it is this factor that made Hannah pray so hard to have a child.

And by her prayer and God’s eventual answer we see that Hannah was less interested in keeping the child for herself as a prize to get back at the other wife, but it was more to stop her taunting and to end her unjustified shame.

So Hannah prayed that God would give her a son, and then she would give the son to God as a priest.