In our text last week we studied Jesus' admonition: "when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you" (Matthew 6:6). The "room" Jesus mentions was the storeroom where the treasures were kept. A mother's greatest treasure is her child. So how do mothers in the Bible pray for their children? Here's what I discovered this week.

Some of you are not mothers, but wish to be. For you, this is a hard day. You watch the joy of the mothers and families around you in worship and don't understand why you cannot join them. You know that you would be a wonderful mother. You hear of mothers aborting or abusing children, and you just cannot understand why you don't have a child to love.

How did someone who wished to be a mother pray? Hannah was the wife of Elkanah. She desperately wished to bear a child, but the years passed with her prayer unanswered.

One time when she and her husband had traveled to worship at the sanctuary at Shiloh, Hannah "wept much and prayed to the Lord. And she made a vow, saying, 'O Lord Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head" (1 Samuel 1:10-11).

Hannah made the "Nazarite vow," dedicating her child to full-time service in the Temple and the work of the Lord. And her son became what she dedicated him to be. Samuel was Israel's last judge, anointer of her first king, prophet and priest of God.

So why go to worship on this Mother's Day? Why seek the spiritual today? Why did Hannah? Because she knew that a child is his gift. How would Hannah answer our question today? She would tell us that every child is the miraculous gift of God, and that he is to be praised and worshipped for such a grace and trust to us. Something in us draws us to worship on Mother's Day, so we can praise the God who has given us the child we celebrate.

Lessons:

Never give up. Keep praying for God's will to be done. Consider all the ways he might answer your prayer, through conception or adoption. Keep trusting him.

Dedicate your unconceived child to the Lord. This does not guarantee that you will have a child, and certainly does not suggest that you have not yet conceived because you have not made such a commitment. I do not know why God brings children to some and not to others. But I do know that every child he gives us is to be returned to him. This is a gift, a trust, a stewardship. Be in prayer now that your child will belong to him.