PrayerBits for Thursday

PrayerBits

A bite sized devotional program
produced by the West Side Presbyterian Church

Thursday

Scripture lesson I Samuel 1:1,17-27 Love thy enemies

Time to reflect: Saul was David's enemy and kept trying to kill David. David passed up at least one easy chance at killing Saul, and in this passage, laments his death.

Moving through the day: Are there any people you need to respect and forgive in the same fashion as David for Saul?

Scripture:

1 Samuel 1

The Birth of Samuel

  There was a certain man from Ramathaim, a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite.

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 lay with Hannah his wife, and the LORD remembered her. 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."

Hannah Dedicates Samuel

 When the man Elkanah went up with all his family to offer the annual sacrifice to the LORD and to fulfill his vow, Hannah did not go. She said to her husband, "After the boy is weaned, I will take him and present him before the LORD, and he will live there always."

  "Do what seems best to you," Elkanah her husband told her. "Stay here until you have weaned him; only may the LORD make good his word." So the woman stayed at home and nursed her son until she had weaned 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 they had slaughtered the bull, they brought the boy to Eli, 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. I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him.