This re-told version of the story of Hannah in 1 Samuel has been created with Mothering Sunday in mind, although you could use it in other contexts.


Extract from the script:

Hannah was barren. And in the time and the place that Hannah lived, to be barren was to be cursed.
But things are not always what they look like. Situations are not always what they seem.
And God has a way of taking one thing and turning it into something completely different.

Hannah was married to Elkanah - a man of means who could afford a second wife - Peninnah. And Peninnah, as it happens, was not barren at all. She had a brood of children, which she stood before Hannah, at every opportunity, to make her curse even worse.

Elkanah was a good man. He saw, he understood, he longed to ease Hannah's pain. So when the family trooped from their home in Ramah to the holy place at Shiloh each year, and when they sat down to eat a portion of the meat that had been offered as a sacrifice to God, Elkanah always made sure that Hannah got a double helping of that meat - a special treat and, surely, the first recorded example of comfort eating.
In spite of all her children, however (and as a powerful argument for monogamy!), Peninnah was jealous of this simple act of kindness. And she did all she could to make that a curse, as well.

"It is God who has closed your womb," she would tell Hannah, there, in the presence of God himself, in his own holy place. And she would do this, not once, not twice, but again and again and again, right up to the time of the feast. And poor Hannah would be so upset that she could...


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