Hannah

1 Samuel 1:20 So in the course of time Hannah conceived and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, saying, "Because I asked the LORD for him." 24 After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine, and brought him to the house of the LORD at Shiloh. 25 When they had slaughtered the bull, they brought the boy to Eli, 26 and she said to him, "As surely as you live, my lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the LORD. 27 I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him. 28 So now I give him to the LORD. For his whole life he will be given over to the LORD." And he worshiped the LORD there.

Hannah's husband had 2 wives. Hannah and Peninnah. We cannot imagine such a thing. We could kill a man that cheats, much less one that we had to share on a regular basis, although many women do just that. That is surely another story for another day. Peninnah is mean and she is having babies and that is supposed to be the worth of a woman in those days. So Peninnah is pretty much letting Hannah know that she is worth nothing.
Hannah goes to God and begs for a child stating that if God gives her a child, she will give the child back to God. And she really does. After the child is weaned.... no one is really too sure exactly what that means. The child may have been weaned as we think of it, possibly as small as 3-4 years old. He may have been any age under the age of 12. Apparently at the age of 13 a Jewish son is considered a man (anyone who has a son can testify that it is NOT the truth... anyone who has had a man under 40 can probably testify to it too....) so he would have been younger than that.
So when the child is weaned, she takes him to the temple and leaves him there. Let's really look at this. She did not live in the city where she left her child. She only went there once a year to sacrifice at the temple. Can you imagine? She sees her son only once a year and she brings him a coat she has made with her hands every year.
1 Samuel 2:21 And the LORD was gracious to Hannah; she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two daughters. Meanwhile, the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the LORD.

God was gracious to Hannah and gave her 5 other children, but I promise you, as a mother, they did not replace the one she gave back to God.. I see a couple of amazing things about this woman. First being that her commitment to God was out of this world. Anyone who has carried a child in their own body and gives birth in pain can understand how unreal the idea of giving your child away would be. Even if it were in commitment to the child, such as an unwed or teenage mother. Or in commitment to God, as this woman did. I do not know that I would have been strong enough to carry out the vow she made to God. She stayed commited to the child, continuing to care for his needs throughout his life. Because of her commitment to God, one of the greatest prophets ever born was able to be the man he was called to be. Many times as a parent, we try to hold on to our child because of what we want for them, instead of what God has for them. We do an extreme disservice to God and to the kingdom when we do this. There are women today that have only been born in order to give birth to and raise a man or woman of God. If we are not true to our purpose with our children, how can the kingdom of God be furthered?
My daughter leaves for college in just a few days. While part of me is very proud of her and glad that she is moving forward, another part of me is distraught. My daughter was given a vision of her purpose when she was yet a young girl. And she has been walking toward it ever since. I went past her bedroom this morning and she has started packing. Much of her belongings are now packed and ready to be moved. As a mother I grieve for the child I am giving to the world. As a woman of God I rejoice for the woman I have had a part in raising.
Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
What are you doing to train up a child? If you do not have your own child, you surely have the ability to affect another's child in a positive manner. You will be blessed for your act of love toward a child. It takes a village to raise a child. Not just one parent, not just two. Stand up this day and sow into the life of a child. You will not know for years to come, just who that child will be.... but you will know that you have made a difference....

Enoch

Genesis 5: 21 When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. 22 And after he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. 23 Altogether, Enoch lived 365 years. 24 Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.
Hebrews 11:5 By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.
Jude 1:14Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men: "See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones 15to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him."

This is the 7th man from Adam.... the bible tells us that "he walked with God for 300 years". Can you imagine literally walking with God? Adam walked with God in the garden in the cool of the day. I would LOVE to be chosen to walk with God physically. We can walk with Him in spirit, that is all I know about.

There are only 2 people in the entire bible that did not experience death. Enoch and Elijah. Enoch was no more and Elijah was caught up. God must have really had special relationship with them for them to be spared from death.
I guess all we can do is to daily try to walk closer to God than the day before. Dying to our own thoughts and desires continually. In order to have a righteous walk before God.
The scripture from Jude is important because it tells us that the ungodly will be judged for the things they say against God. The things that we say out of our mouths are very important. We should be cautious to say only what is necessary. This is surely a lesson I am learning the hard way.

I find it amazing that God chose particular people for particular reasons to be entered into the bible... of course there are actually many other manuscripts that people don't know about because as they were putting the bible together, for one reason or another, certain men did not want some things included... Enoch wrote a book... the book of Enoch.. I have read this book and it tells much about what you see in heaven... the things that are written by Jude about Enoch come from that book..

Cain

Adam and Eve gave birth to a child and Eve says, with the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man... I had a son and I didn't think I had given birth to a man... I think that is significant that she realized he was a man from birth...

So in the course of time... Cain gave an offering to God from the soil and Abel from the flocks... and God rejected Cain's offering but received Abel's offering. That had always bothered me until a short time ago when my pastor stated that Abel's offering was from the "first fruits" and Cain's was not. Meaning, that Cain gave what was left over and Abel gave before he worried about what he needed for himself or his family. Wow... How often do we do that? How often do we pay our bills and after that is done, decide what we can give God.... Or worse yet, we pay our bills, buy what we want, and after all that is done, decide if we will give God anything.... Yet we expect so much from Him... even if it were not material things, we expect peace and health and mercy and grace, yet struggle with giving offerings to the God who gives all... sheesh... we are about a sickening lot of people...

So, when God does not look at what Cain gave with favor, Cain is mad and his face is downcast and God says to him... Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."
Sin is crouching at your door and it desires to have you... but you must master it.... How often do we realize that sin is really crouching at our door? How often do we realize it desires to have us? How often do we do what is right in order to be accepted?

Then Cain calls Abel out in the field and kills him... When God asks where Abel is, smart alec that Cain is, he says am I my brother's keeper... Can you imagine speaking to God in such a way??? Whew... So God says that The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth." Cain said to the LORD, "My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me." But the LORD said to him, "Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over." Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the LORD's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

How very like us... Cain kills Abel, then thinks it is unfair that someone might kill him... What in the world? The worst part of all this to me would be to have been driven from the presence of the Lord. Can you imagine? Just on days that God is far from us or silent, we struggle... but to literally be driven from the presence of the Lord... But just like God... He didn't give up on Cain... He continued to help him... to prosper him... to love him... Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch.
Before we are driven from the presence of God... We need to recognize Him in all His glory and majesty and honor and give to God the first fruits of our labor...

Rahab

Rahab was a prostitute... many times we try to clean up what someone was in the past... the bible does not try to pretend she was anything other than a prostitute...
what would we say about a prostitute? we would in our righteous self say that she is filthy and nasty and does the unmentionable things that real women will not do... whatever... my perception of a prostitute is someone who is very skilled at a trade... and lets put it out there... women get mad worrying that their skills are not comparable... that is why she has to be looked at as so dirty... but what I really see a prostitute as is someone that a man can be free with... he can be open and honest with her and know that she has been so judged in her life that she would not judge him... they say that many times men pay women (prostitutes) just to talk... isn't that a sad situation if he has a wife that he cannot tell her his innermost thoughts... how do you become a wife that your husband can't talk to?...
back to Rahab... so the spies of Israel are hidden by Rahab the prostitute.. and they promise her their lives for her families lives... they spare her family because she spared them... one of the amazing things of the story is the fact that God spoke to her, even though she was not an Israelite... she states that she knew that God had given the land to them and that God had opened the Red Sea and that all the people of her country were afraid of them because of who their God was... we tend to think that God only speaks to the saved and that is not true... He speaks to whomever He chooses....
so as the story goes on... that the Israelites overcome the city and kill everyone in it with the exception of Rahab and her family and over time.. Rahab is given in marriage to Salmon... one of the men who had been at her house as a spy... and she is one of the few women that is listed in the geneology of not only David... but Jesus...
how often do we judge people not by their heart, but by their appearance or their past.... and the bible tells us that God looks not upon the countenance of a man... but upon the spirit within him... I can't tell you how thankful I am that God is willing to overlook who we were and who we still are and focus on our spirit and who He sees us as in the future...

02.22.11 I read back over this.. and while I agree with what I wrote.. I am amazed at how God has transformed my mind over this period of 2 1/2 years... thank you Lord!!

Eve

Can you imagine being Eve? The first woman created. No question of who she is created for. No question of who her husband should be or if she has made a mistake. The mother of all mankind. One thing for sure, she couldn't look at anyone else's husband and wonder why hers didn't act like that.
I guess the thing we attribute most to Eve is the fall. But the bible says she was deceived. She was deceived while Adam sinned openly, meaning he had knowledge of it. How many times have you been deceived? She had children. She had heartache from them. One of her sons killed his brother. The first murder. But God gave her another son. Genesis 4:25 Adam lay with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, saying, "God has granted me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him." 26 Seth also had a son, and he named him Enosh. At that time men began to call on the name of the LORD.
The bible says at that time men began to call on the name of the Lord. In other words, they started preaching the words of God. Eve had relationship with God. She had relationship with her husband and she had relationship with her children.
So to me, although we can see that Eve was not perfect and that we have all suffered because of her deception, she was still a good woman. After her sin, she got back up and lived. She did not dwell on her wrong doing. She asked forgiveness and turned from the sin. Maybe instead of remembering Eve for the fall, we should remember her as the mother of mankind, the example of a wife she was. I know that I do not want to be remembered for my sins.