Humble Beginnings – 1 Samuel 1

For all the accounts of great wars and conquests recorded in the book of Samuel, it still starts with the story of humble beginnings from a lowly town in the hill country of Ephraim.

The True Empathizer

God teaches us to show sympathy towards others, and sometimes He allows us to go through pain to understand other’s pain so that we may sympathetically pray for their remedy. At the same time, we should expect God to show His compassion to us rather than expecting pity from others.

Resolutions with God

We are a couple of months into the new year and by now, for some of us, the resolutions we made are a distant memory. Often times, upon hearing a powerful message or perhaps receiving the answers to our longtime prayers, we make a resolution with God but soon forget about it. At the beginning of the book of Samuel, we find the story of humble beginnings for a small family, living in the hill country of Ephraim and their resolutions with God that changed Israel’s political landscape.

Eli – The Penultimate Judge of Israel

Eli was a priest, chosen from the priestly clan, who judged Israel for forty years (1 Samuel 1:9; 1 Samuel 2:28; 1 Samuel 4:18). He had two sons named Hophni and Phinehas who did not know God and sinned against Him, they treated Lord’s offering with contempt (1 Samuel 1: 4; 1 Samuel 2: 12,…