RE Verse reading–1 Samuel 1:1-20 (day three)
“I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life.” Reading this story through present-dayeyes will invite us to interpret Hannah’s grief through our current sensibilities: Babies give us the status of mommy-hood and daddy-hood that we highly value; babies give us an opportunity to breathe into them our own sense of how the world ought to be; the way we raise babies establishes our “brand identity” among our peer group. Such values, though, are part of a shift in modern thinking about families in our society—a shift that sees children as a statement we make to the world about ourselves. We would do well to learn from Hannah: She desired that her son live as the Lord’s statement to the world about the Lord himself.
