1 Samuel 1: 9b-20, 24-28 - We prayed for this child

This passage from Samuel is the story of Hannah praying desperately for a child and God hearing and answering her pleas.

Now Eli the priest was sitting on his chair by the doorpost of the Lord’s house. In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly. And she made a vow, saying, “Lord Almighty, if you will only look on 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.”
As she kept on praying to the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, “How long are you going to stay drunk? Put away your wine.”
“Not so, my lord,” Hannah replied, “I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. Do not take your servant for a wicked woman; I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief.”
Eli answered, “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.”
She said, “May your servant find favor in your eyes.” Then she went her way and ate something, and her face was no longer downcast.
Early the next morning they arose and worshiped before the Lord and then went back to their home at Ramah. Elkanah made love to his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her. 20 So in the course of time Hannah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, saying, “Because I asked the Lord for him.”
...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. 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.” And he worshiped the Lord there.

- 1 Samuel 1: 9b-20, 24-28

The passage has always been special to me as I have wanted to have a child for as long as I can remember. It took a lot of time for that desire to be fulfilled though. I remember three years ago on Mothering Sunday crying in church because I'd been dating my then-boyfriend Kevin for 18 months and it didn't seem to be going anywhere, I was getting older, and I wanted to be a mother so badly. A friend prayed with me during the service, which helped me feel better, but the underlying desire was still there.

But God had everything worked out! Five months later Kevin proposed to me and before the end of the year we were married. We decided to wait until we'd been married for a year until we started trying for a baby, to get used to being a couple first. In 2015 we started trying for a baby. So many prayers were sent up on the subject for the first six months of the year! And in August we finally got a positive test result. I remember clearly sitting there looking at the test result and praying "thank You, thank You, thank You!"

I had to wait until I was 37 years old before I finally got the child I longed for, and while I wasn't being mocked for being childless by other people as Hannah was, it was something that weighed heavily on me. The story of Samuel had been an encouragement to me and a ray of hope, even through all the years that I was single and having a baby seemed an impossible dream.

The art

The verse I chose to illustrate, v27, is very simple but says so much - a release from all the stress and longing, a huge prayer of praise, and a statement of how good God is.

I prepped the page with gesso and then decided to use my Copic markers to add a wash of colour over the page. This wasn't my best idea! Not only did the gesso stop the markers blending together properly, but every pen stroke showed up and the markers bled through the page quite heavily in places where I had missed with the gesso. I can still read the text through the colour, but I will be more careful with using Copics in my Bible again.

I used my Pentel 0.8 pen to do the lettering on the side, then filled in the banners and spaces in the letters with a white gel pen. At the bottom I used the space to journal some thoughts about why the verse is special to me.

This was partially prompted by the Heaven is Calling Bible art journalling series by Rebekah R Jones, lesson 1, Set your hope on a good God.

Genesis 8:21-22 & 9:11-16 - God keeps His promises

The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” - Genesis 8:21-22

Sometimes things can seem to be completely out of control, and it's good to remember that we can rely on God's word. These verses are part of the story of Noah and the promise God makes to Noah immediately after the flood.

The second part of the promise is in the next chapter^:

I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” - Genesis 9:11-16

I love rainbows because they always remind me of this story and that God does keep His promises - we can rely on what He says and what He tells us He's going to do. It's very reassuring to know that even if we don't know what's going on, God does.

For the art I used my watercolour paints to create a very simple rainbow background and then did the lettering in the margin. I'd prepped my page with gesso, but missed a few bits around the edges. Fortunately the paint didn't bleed through, so the only result was that it looked a bit darker on the front of the page on the un-gessoed bits.