No, living the Christian life is not always easy. Yes, God calls us to respond to His grace with faith and devotion, entrusting ourselves completely to Him, and considering that everything we are and everything we have belongs to him. It certainly wasn’t easy, for example, for Hannah to give up her only son to the service of the Lord, just as it wasn’t easy for our Heavenly Father to give up His only Son so that we might be saved.

But at the same time, both Hannah’s story and Jesus’ story show us that great blessings can come from such acts of selfless service and devotion. Just in this short passage we can see how Samuel was blessed by his mother’s faithfulness – he got to minister before the Lord, which was a great privilege not afforded to very many people in those days. In fact, verse 21 says that even if he didn’t get to be around his parents while he was growing up, he was always in the presence of the Lord.

And God blessed Hannah as well. Not only could she be proud of the accomplishments of her firstborn, whom God had given her even though she hadn’t been able to have children for years. No, God blessed Hannah and Elkanah with more sons and daughters, rewarding their obedience with even more life and joy.

And God has brought the same sort of blessings to us through the gift of Jesus, hasn’t He? For the Father was willing not only to send His Son into this world to serve Him. He was also willing to make a perfect sacrifice of Him, allowing Him to be crucified so that all who trust in Him might be redeemed from the power of sin and death. And through Jesus’ sacrifice, life and love have come to all His people, filling us with the hope of the resurrection and giving us the power to live in the presence of God all the days of our lives.

So, sure, following Jesus isn’t always easy. But does He deserve anything less than all our trust and devotion, all our faith and praise?

I Samuel 2:18-21 (ESV)

18 Samuel was ministering before the LORD, a boy clothed with a linen ephod. 19 And his mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. 20 Then Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, and say, “May the LORD give you children by this woman for the petition she asked of the LORD.” So then they would return to their home. 21 Indeed the LORD visited Hannah, and she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew in the presence of the LORD.