I am not sure how I fell upon this particular topic, but in this new year, I have begun to study the women of the Bible, starting with those in the Old Testament. Ironically, many of these women share a common trait: They desperately wanted children.
I can relate.
Of course, my longing does not center on wanting to have and hold new babies; It revolves around wanting to have and hold my grown son Chris, who is no longer here with us on earth.
Even though my longing is spurred by what I have lost (temporarily), I can very much relate to those Old Testament women.
Simply put, we all grieve not being mommas!
So, as the second calendar year without Chris rolled its way into my head, my heart was touched by the biblical stories of these grieving, childless mothers.
SARAH
Take Sarah, for instance.
First named Sarai, she married a man named Abram, a man God called to leave his home and travel to a land promised to be his inheritance, along with more descendants than the stars in the sky. By faith, Abram became Abraham and Sarai became Sarah, a change that spiritually designated them as the father and mother of nations.
Yep, it all sounded great except for one small problem: Sarah was barren, and she stayed that way for 90 years.
By that point, her dreams and her body were dried up and seemingly useless. She even laughed at the renewed (yet again) promise from God to give her a child. Her faith was gone.
And so was Ishmael, the “son” she had maneuvered and manipulated to get for her and her husband via their servant girl Hagar. Her own methods of creation had failed to satisfy the motherly longings of her heart.
Sarah was childless, and it was way too late for anyone (including God) to change that fact – or so she thought.
We know the end of Sarah’s story though, and it was not barren or futile. She truly was the mother of nations.
REBEKAH
But fast forward to the story of her daughter-in-law Rebekah.
For 20 years after her faith-driven marriage to a man she had never laid eyes on, Rebekah and Isaac were still childless.
Think about that! Imagine what she must have felt and thought.
Through a miraculous series of events, the Most High God brought her from a foreign land to her husband and gave her a match literally made in heaven. So, why would God not also give her the desire of her heart – a child?
Despite the bleakness of Rebekah’s barren, childless situation, her husband Isaac sought the Lord on her behalf, and she conceived not one son but two.
RACHEL
One of those sons, Jacob, eventually married the love of his life, Rachel. Alas, she too was barren, although Jacob’s other wife (Rachel’s sister) had a house full of sons.
Rachel’s heart was so broken and filled with so much envy that she cried out to her husband, “Give me children, or else I will die” (Genesis 30:1).
Sadly, as her womb remained empty, Rachel resorted to her own wits and wiles – just as Jacob’s grandmother Sarah had done. And again, her machinations and manipulations did not fully ease the longings of Rachel’s heart.
Yet, in His own timing, God did remember her plea and blessed her with two sons. But Rachel died giving birth to her second son, the last of 12 sons born to Jacob.
HANNAH
At this point in biblical history, I must admit that my studies were beginning to depress me. And I really did not need any help in that arena because I was depressed enough thinking about my own childless longings.
But then, I was reminded of another childless woman – Hannah.
Hannah’s story is different.
Yes, she was barren. Yes, she was heartbroken. Yes, all the other women in her life were enjoying their children. And a final, resounding yes, the odds were not looking good for Hannah to ever have a child of her own.
However, unlike Sarah or Rachel, she did not take matters into her own hands, and unlike Rebekah, Hannah did not blame her husband for her predicament nor demand him to fix it.
Instead, she took all her feelings of failure, longing, envy, and despair to the altar, and in absolute anguish, she surrendered everything to God.
YOU AND ME
Now, that’s a lesson we can all heed.
But wait, you say.
Didn’t Eli the priest rebuke Hannah for appearing to be drunk, when in truth, she was simply broken in the presence of God?
Yep – which goes to remind us that our hope is not in a man or even the church in which men serve. As the Bible tells us repeatedly, the Lord alone is our hope, and as Psalm 33:22 promises us, that solitary hope will never fail for it is founded in His love for us.
It is so great a love that He gave everything to purchase us back (with His own blood) from the bondage of sin, death, hell, and the grave.
And even though the Son of God had not yet come to sacrifice Himself on the cross for her, Hannah believed in that love.
So much so, that she promised to give God the first of those children she was praying for in that moment of surrender. Out of her desperate faith, God gave His people the blessing of Samuel, the priest, prophet, judge, teacher, and leader.
Without Hannah’s baby boy Samuel, the history of God’s people could have been so very different. Possibly even much more barren and devoid of many blessings of God.
But what did I ultimately learn from these Old Testament women and their barrenness?
I learned that maybe it is time for each of us to cry out in desperation to God for more children, more brothers and sisters in Christ. Maybe it’s time to be so consumed with evangelism that we literally would rather die ourselves than see our fellow man die and spend an eternity in hell, separated from the God Who loved them so much that He gave His all for them.
A renewed burden for souls – that is exactly what I garnered from Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Hannah.
So, here is my prayer for 2025, and I am praying it to God and not to man: “Give me children, O Lord, or I will die!”
