Now and forever, pondering the full impact of mothers’ prayers

By Dean Collins

It has been well over 25 years since I had any meaningful conversation with my mother. She was a simple and humble person, the youngest of 13 children born in Sebring Ohio. She never finished high school, but during my last couple of years in college, mom did finish her GED. My memory of her career includes her working in a book store, a warehouse, and as an assistant manager and later manager of a Circle K gas station and convenience store. She spent the last several years in a memory care unit due to a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. She died in 2003, but conversations ended many years before her death.

Mother’s promise

I was thinking about my mother this morning while reading the first two chapters of 1 Samuel. My mother was unlike Hannah in that she had children, five of them, all boys. Sadly I don’t know much about my mom’s prayer life though I am confident that prayer got her through many tough days. She lost her first husband to an early death. My father married her when my oldest brother was a toddler. My mother and father divorced when I was 16 and they remarried each other when I was 30. My parents certainly did not have an ideal relationship.

If my mom had lived long enough, she would have seen and known many of her sons’ accomplishments and enjoyed watching her grandchildren and great-grandchildren grow and flourish. While I know little about her prayer life, I can’t imagine her not praying for her boys. I believe my brothers and I were a source of her pride.

Hannah followed through with her promise that if God gave her a son she would give the son back to the Lord. Hannah’s beautiful prayer came just after she gave up Samuel to live with Eli the priest. Samuel was a young boy. With her prayer of surrender, praise, and victory. Hannah was filled with satisfaction because of her complete surrender to the Lord. Even today we know the benefits of her surrender. Her son, Samuel, anointed Israel’s first king and his successor, King David, from whose line our King Jesus was born.

Mothers’ prayers

Only in eternity will we understand the full impact of prayers offered by all the mothers of the world. They may not be as poetic as Hannah’s, but every mother’s prayers stir the heart and compassion of God even to this day. I know that it was not just my mother’s prayers but her diligence in taking me to church every Sunday and Wednesday and her insistence that if I wanted to use the car on Friday and Saturday evening then I would also be using it to drive to church on Sundays.

One of my strongest memories of my mother was after I had surgery to repair my broken nose. I was uncomfortable and in some pain. I remember my mom sitting by my bedside singing hymns to me. Years later my last encounter with my mother was by her bedside. She couldn’t speak, and her disease made her so angry and restless that she sometimes had to be strapped to the bed. On my last visit, I watched her agitation still as I sang many of those same hymns. She went to be with the Lord not long after that day.

We don’t know how Heaven works exactly. But somehow I think our loved ones who die in the Lord get to see many of their prayers answered after they’re gone. Prayer has no shelf life. Our prayers never grow stale. Revelation 5:8 reminds us that the prayers of the saints are as bowls of incense offered to the Lord. Our prayers live there even now. My mother’s prayers continue as well. For now, our best and most important work may well be the prayers we offer every day for our children and grandchildren.

And as we think this weekend about Mother’s Day, I’m realizing how grateful I am for my mother’s prayers.

Your time with God’s Word
1 Samuel‬ ‭1:19-20, 26, 28; 2:1-10; Revelation 5:8 ‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Photo by Danie Franco at Unsplash 

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