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BY ANNIE LARKIN

1 Samuel 1:4:20, 2:1-10

As the mother of a boy named Samuel, I feel a certain kinship with Hannah. I love her audacity as she prays so fervently in the temple that the priest, Eli, thinks she had been drinking. I am inspired by her persistence to expect a miracle from God and her audacity to claim that she merits God's favor.

Hannah was barren; God had closed her womb. But the story in 1 Samuel 1:4-20 is not just Hannah's personal saga. Underneath, it is woven together with the history of Israel - a nation in turmoil and besieged by enemies.

In giving Hannah her son Samuel, God shapes the future of the world - raising up a prophet who will create a kingship in a country that will deliver into the world a savior. Hannah, Samuel, Saul, David and all the people that come to life in a holy genealogy are instruments of God's love and God's plan.

I am also challenged by Hannah. As the mother of a boy named Samuel, I would have a difficult time handing my child so irrevocably back to God.

As part of her prayer, Hannah vows that if God gives her a son, she will "give him back to the Lord for all the days of his life." The completeness of her promise scares me a little.

But the Rev. Bruce Birch, an Old Testament scholar from the Baltimore-Washington Conference who wrote the reflections on the books of 1 and 2 Samuel in the New Interpreter's Bible Commentary, sheds some light on this for me.

"We can learn from Hannah that the proper response to the gift of God's grace is to give it back. If we attempt to keep it as a possession, we will lose it," Birch writes.

So Hannah takes her infant son back to the spot where she had prayed for his conception and dedicates him to the Lord.

In many ways, Hannah's story is ours and it is the church's. We too are called to give back the grace God bestows on us. Whether in praise or in service, God blesses us so that we may be a blessing.

"In every generation there has been a need for some in the church to move beyond receiving grace to returning grace," Birch wrote. "What was asked must become what is lent back. People and communities of faith must become less concerned over who and how many have received God's grace and more concerned with the ways in which God's grace is given back to God's service."

But how do we go about returning grace? Again Hannah stands as an illustration.

"She left him there for the Lord," the Bible says. She left her son with Eli and in the next verse Hannah prays and sings.

Her song, which mirrors Psalm 113, is one of praise. She testifies about a God who enables barren women to give birth, who can transform one woman's life or the destiny of a nation.

And in her praise, Hannah makes sure we know that it is God's transforming power, not our own, that delivers hope and possibility.

As Advent approaches, I can't help but hear stirrings of Mary's Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) in Hannah's song. Both were mothers by God's hand and both said yes to giving all that God had blessed them with to the world in love. Can we do any less?