From Bitter Tears to Grateful Praise

As we this enter this Thanksgiving season, I find myself thinking not just about blessings, but about where gratitude begins. It doesn’t always start around a table filled with family and laughter. Sometimes it begins in the quiet ache of prayers whispered through tears and longing.

That’s where we meet Hannah in 1 Samuel 1. Her story begins in sorrow. Year after year, she longed for a child, yet her prayers seemed unanswered. To make matters worse, Peninnah, her husband Elkanah’s other wife, (yes, Elkanah had two wives, Peninnah and Hannah), taunted and ridiculed her because of her barrenness. Jealous over Elkanah’s love for Hannah, she used Hannah’s pain as a weapon. Scripture tells us that Hannah was “deeply distressed and wept bitterly.” Yet in her anguish, she didn’t turn away from God, she turned toward Him. She poured out her heart before the Lord, holding nothing back.

Something sacred happened in that moment. Before anything around her changed, something within her changed first. In her anguish, she made a vow—not to cling to her own desires, but to release them into God’s hands. In that sacred exchange, she surrendered her will for His. She promised that if God granted her a son, she would give him back to the Lord.

When God answered, she kept her word. Holding Samuel in her arms, she returned to the temple and said,

“I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of Him.
So now I give him to the Lord” (1 Samuel 1:27–28). And then she sang. The same woman who once wept in bitterness now lifted her voice in praise:

“My heart rejoices in the Lord;
my strength is exalted in the Lord…
There is no one holy like the Lord” (1 Samuel 2:1–2).

Hannah’s story reminds us that thanksgiving often grows out of waiting and surrender. Gratitude isn’t simply a response to answered prayer, it becomes an act of worship when we place every unanswered one into the hands of a faithful God.

Hannah’s offering of Samuel was her act of worship and her way of giving back to the One who had given her so much. In the same way, when we remember what Christ has given us, His very life for our redemption, our hearts are moved to respond. In our brokenness, Jesus died so we could have life. Out of grateful hearts, we pledge to walk in obedience, to give Him our praise, and to offer our lives back to Him.

As we gather this Thanksgiving, some of us may still be waiting for our own “Samuels.” But even in the waiting, we can thank Him for His presence, His promises, His love, and for what He is cultivating in us right now. The same God who met Hannah in her tears meets us in ours, turning our sorrow into song and our longing into praise.

“Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy” (Psalm 126:5).