Mothers Day 2008
God has given us our bible to teach us the most important lessons about living as human beings. God has given us our mothers so that we might learn the process of becoming a loving human being.
There are many famous names in the bible and many character studies we could choose but none that will reveal the heart of God as clearly as the study of the mothers of the bible.
Eve was called the mother of all the living. Through her human kind would be perpetuated. Eve was formed from the rib of Adam.
Genesis 2:21
21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the mans ribs [h] and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib [i] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
Anonymous Poem
Woman was created from the rib of man
She was not created from his head to top him
Nor from his feet to be stepped upon
She was made from his side to be equal with him
From beneath his arm to be protected by him
Near his heart to be loved by him
Mothers are special to God and motherhood a special ministry to women. It was only through the fall of sin that child birth became more painful.
Genesis 3:16
16 To the woman he said,
I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Despite the pain that child birth produces women still desire to be mothers and willingly suffer the pain to bring a new life into the world. I wonder if men would be so inclined to suffer likewise if they were the ones to bear the children.
Not all mothers are able to bear children yet it seems the desire to be a mother resides deep within women. We begin inside our mothers sheltered from the world and receiving sustenance from her as we grow to be ready to be born. Medical science is still learning the mysteries surrounding human birth and the child - mother bond.
Infants are exquisitely sensitive to maternal behavior, said Norman E. Spear, distinguished professor of psychology at Binghamton University.
New research supports what mothers have long believed, that babies in the womb hear what is going on outside. Even more intriguing, there is evidence that babies may share in their mothers emotions.
For centuries many cultures have believed that some sort of emotional network operated between mother and baby and for this reason admonished mothers to keep their minds and bodies pure during pregnancy. In the past twenty-five years the new field of prenatal psychology has sprung up. Using new technology, prenatal psychologists have used various windows to the womb and have found much that is credible about these superstitions. When mother is happy, baby is happy; when mother is anxious, baby is too.
Studies also show that a six-month-old fetus can move his body to the rhythm of his mothers speech. Not only can a preborn baby react to sound, he or she can perceive different tastes and sights. Add sweetener to the amniotic fluid and the fetal gourmet doubles his rate of swallowing; add a sour substance and baby slows his swallowing. Even as early as the fourth month a baby frowns, squints, and grimaces. Much of this mother may have known or sensed and science is once again just catching up with Moms.
Psalm 127:3 KJV
Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
Some of us are not raised by our biological mothers. Yet that does in no way diminish the mother - child bond and love exhibited by a step-mother. Due to war and disease children all over the world are in need of mothers. God puts upon the hearts of women the desire to reach out to these little ones and claim them for their own.
Moses was given up by his biological mother in order to save his life and was received by his step mother a princess in Pharaohs court. He would be reunited with his biological mother and be raised to be a Prince of Egypt and the deliverer of his people by Gods hand. Exodus Chapter 2
What it must have taken to let go of little Moses. Still every mother knows to some degree that feeling as she sees her little girl or little boy take the bus for the first time or enter a classroom alone.
The Mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mothers side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother and to become fully independent.
Erich Fromm
Mothers are there for so many firsts in our lives. Our first steps, our first word, our first laugh and our first tears. Mothers share with God an interest in our firsts.
Jeremiah 1:5 NIV
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.
God knows us before he imparts us to our mothers. It is God who puts us with our mothers. Our lives are bound together by His design.
From our mothers we learn kindness, forgiveness, sharing, patience, and love. Mothers are more than teachers and children are more than pupils.
The mothers heart is the childs schoolroom.
H. W. Beecher
Another famous quote says: The hand that rocks the cradle. Is the hand that rules the world
W. R. Wallace
It is the mothers who shape our children who in turn shape our world. That is a lot of responsibility but God has seen fit to entrust it to women.
Letting go of your child to allow them to make their own mistakes is such a hard thing to do yet mothers have done it for millenniums. The bible gives us many examples of children who have strayed from their mothers good teaching and example. We have Samson who let his emotions be ruled by Delilah. That is not what he was taught but in the end he finished well. Judges 16:23
Mothers look at us as a continual work in progress, always looking for us to change. They exert their influence on us through the whole of our lives in the hope that we will be a finished product of their life for which they can take some measure of satisfaction.
No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
The song Hes Still Working on Me can also be sung with a mothers influence in mind.
A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.
Washington Irving (1783-1859)
No a mothers work is never done and for that reason many wise mothers point us to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith so that we might become complete. In Jesus we see the lengths we are to go to provide for our mothers.
For Jesus on the cross suffering as he was, weak as he was and alone as he was spent some of his last strength to speak to his friend John and said these words concerning Mary.
John 19:26
26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, Dear woman, here is your son, 27 and to the disciple, Here is your mother. From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
My mother taught me to pray, to sing and to dance to love and be loved and to discover Jesus. I hope that yours has done likewise and that you are repeating the process. Let us honor our mothers as Jesus has demonstrated to us and care for them with our last ounce of strength. Let our mothers bring our child up to know the Lord. For this they will receive a great and eternal reward.
