Samuel

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."

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.
So now I give him to the Lord.
For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord."
And he worshiped the Lord there.

. . . But Samuel was ministering before the Lord -
a boy wearing a linen ephod.
Each year his mother made him a little robe
and took it to him
when she went up with her husband
to offer the annual sacrifice.
Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, saying,
"May the Lord give you children by this woman
to take the place of the one she prayed for
and gave to the Lord."
And the Lord was gracious to Hannah;
she conceived and gave birth
to three sons and two daughters.
Meanwhile, the boy Samuel
grew up in the presence of the Lord.

(I Samuel 1:16-20, 24-28; 2:18-28)