How grateful?

We are reading this week in 1 & 2 Samuel. Here’s what caught my eye from the first pages:

      After [Samuel] was weaned, [Hannah] 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. When the bull had been sacrificed, they brought the boy to Eli, and she said to him, “Pardon me, my lord. As surely as you live, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the LORD. I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the LORD. For his whole life he will be given over to the LORD.” (1 Samuel 1:24–28)

What a tremendous gift Hannah gives the LORD in gratitude for what the LORD has done for her! It’s not hard to imagine what the boy Samuel must have meant to her as her only son. I marvel at how much she loves God, at how grateful she is.

What would it take for you and me to have faith like that?