I didn’t come up with the title for this piece “Dedication” referees to until after I’d already started painting it. I got a couple of weeks in and finally decided to pray about it. I asked the Lord to give me a title for this project that would point to His goodness. Shortly after I ended the prayer, the story of Hannah came to my mind.

In the Old Testament, 1st Samuel begins with the story of a woman named Hannah who was unable to have children. As a last resort, she traveled to the Lord’s temple and prayed for a son. She made a promise to the Lord that if He would answer her prayer, she would dedicate the boy to serving in the Lord’s temple all the days of his life. She was praying so hard that Eli, the chief priest, thought she might be drunk and asked he to leave. She begged him to let her stay and told him her situation. Eli sent her off in peace and she returned home with her husband, no longer sad. God remembered her plea and she soon became pregnant with a son, naming him Samuel.

Hannah waited for her son to be weaned but then went through with the promise she made to the Lord and brought him to Eli to serve in the temple. God blessed Hannah with more children after fallowing though on her promise. Scripture says the Lord was with Samuel all his days and, after God’s people had requested a king to lead them, would go on to announce a young shepherd boy as Israel’s king. This boy was none other than David, Israel’s most famous king.

“Dedication” can mean different things to the viewer. A mother’s dedication to her young, a calf’s trust and dependence on its mother or even the instinct an animal has to travel from one area to another every year. But to me, it represents God’s dedication to us and how He blesses us when we choose to honor Him.