Celebrate childbirth as if it has just happened

FRIDAY, MAY 18: We have just celebrated Mother’s Day. How many of you honour and care for your mother every day?

As a mother, I celebrate having children each day, because having children is a blessing from the Lord. Real mothers protect, love, and care for their children continuously.

Why is that? I believe that real mothers do what they do because they are actually still celebrating the birth of their child.

It was precious then, and it is precious right now.

It was the greatest moment in your life way back then and when you pull the memory to your present moment you cannot help but celebrate it, as if it happened yesterday (that is, minus the labour pains).

Oh, the joy when your newborn was placed in your arms.

In the Bible, Hannah presents reasons to celebrate your child/children. Here they are:

You remember life without them

1 Samuel 1:6 And her adversary also provoked her sore, for to make her fret, because the LORD had shut up her womb.

7 And as he did so year by year, when she went up to the house of the LORD, so she provoked her; therefore she wept, and did not eat.

Hannah could reflect back on a time when she desperately desired to have a child.

Not children; just one child. Hannah pained to produce from out of her womb. Hannah’s grief was devastatingly real. She was emotionally crushed as she saw others with child after child, while she had none.

To make matters worse, the surrogate woman she had chosen to have children with her husband, was now so lifted up in pride that she too belittled and bothered Hannah. Hannah lived a painful existence, seemingly with no end in sight.

As Hannah watched her slave girl take motherhood and use it as a battering ram or a torpedo against her very sensitive and raw emotions of inadequacy and uselessness, Hannah had no choice but to talk to God.

There may be times in your life when you will experience something so painful that the only person who can truly understand your pain is an omniscience God. To speak to anyone else would be futile and even more frustrating. That was Hannah’s condition and position before she had children.

You now have children

Some may say they want children, but then they “drop the ball” when they actually have them. This is a shame.

Not Hannah. Oh no! Hannah had cried and prayed unto God to grant her the privilege of motherhood.

Hannah had spent a great many years watching others bear children, while she had none.

2:1 And Hannah prayed, and said, My heart rejoiceth in the LORD, mine horn is exalted in the LORD: my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies; because I rejoice in thy salvation.

Hannah was rejoicing. She had already experienced joy and now she was rejoicing or experiencing joy again. How is Hannah able to RE-joice? Hannah can RE-joice because the memory of God answering her prayers was so real that she was able to live that moment over and over again.

Bermuda, can you imagine what it was like for Hannah to hold baby Samuel?

 Can you imagine the joyful tears that flowed on that day? Can you imagine Hannah looking at her baby and then looking unto God, her salvation?

God was her salvation. God rescued her from a place of barrenness to a place of bringing forth.

The further beauty of this passage is that Hannah went on to have five more children.

When God opens up your womb, He really opens up your womb. Hannah now had six children to remind her that God cannot fail and that she was right to place her trust in God and to render her prayerful petition unto God.

Hannah and her brood were a living testimony, loudly proclaiming that God is able to do the impossible. Every time you saw one of Hannah’s children, you could not help but take joy again at what God had done.

1 Samuel 2:2 There is none holy as the LORD: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God.

Hannah knew how to relive a moment. Do you? Can you pull back a past blessing and celebrate as if it had just happened? That will determine whether you are truly able to RE-joice.