A Mother's Love

And one of the best ways for a child to understand what “Unconditional love” looks like to SEE IT between mom & dad. The best way for mom & dad to show love to your children is to create a safe and loving home-life by loving each other... and loving each other even when the other isn’t very loveable.

Because “Conditional love” is not love at all. It is a means of controlling another person. “If you don’t…, then I won’t love you.” That’s not love. God’s Love is choosing to love even when it’s hard to love… even when they’re nailing your hands to a cross.

Love is isn’t a noun, it’s a VERB… it’s an ACTION that we demonstrate to each other… not only for the sake of the marriage, but for the spiritual wellbeing of our children as well.

And that’s why God had so much to say in the Bible about divorce. Not just because it hurts so much and makes holidays so complicated… but because of what it does to a child’s understanding of unconditional love… because then that child, for the first time, discovers that there IS no unconditional love--where a person is loved no matter what. Then a child figures out that love only lasts as long as you BEHAVE a certain way, or DO the right things…

God’s love IS truly unconditional. And so throughout the Bible that love that God has for us is depicted with “Bride and Groom” kind of imagery. Jesus is the Groom and we are the Bride…

Isaiah 62 says:

as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,

so will your God rejoice over you.

Paul wrote to the Ephesians 5

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

Divorce messes around with a child’s understanding of God’s love…

But even when a child doesn’t see it between mom & dad, they DO in the expression of a mother’s love for her child.

There are mothers who even mess that up… but for most of us… mothers are THE source of unconditional love… where we are loved just because of who we are, not because of our behavior or even our failure to return that love.

And so even though a mother’s love isn’t a perfect demonstration of God’s love for us… it IS a first experience… and therefore a lasting image that forms in the mind of the child.

And so that’s why God designed things the way He did… with newborn humans needing parents to raise them… That’s why God put us into families.

It’s possible for God to create creatures that don’t need their parents… in fact, most of the planet works that way.

Our school kids got to experience that by watching a bunch of chickens hatch in an incubator… cause they come out pretty much ready to go… the hen doesn’t stick around (as a matter of fact, in this case there was no hen at all… unless you call Mrs. Searcy the hen) because the chicks come out already knowing how to eat and take care of themselves.

Humans? We need parents for years…

God did that on purpose, so that we’d grow up in a setting where we’d experience and begin to understand what LOVE is all about.

And again, there is no perfect set of parents who perfectly represent God to a child, but –even then—when a child sees parents who aren’t being very loving… and STILL they are committed to each other and forgive each other and work at it until they can BE Jesus to each other… that child learns that maybe even HE can be loved… even when he’s not loveable.