Mother’s Day 2017
Our Bible contains all kinds of events about Kings and Queens and Prophets and Priests. We can read of great warriors and wealthy merchants as well as the lives of many ordinary people.
After reading about all of these lives you will find that God has also given special attention to the lives of Mother’s.
God has honored Mother’s and been careful to draw our attention to them because He has a special place in His heart for them.
While God is the life giver, a Mother is a life bearer. She must care for the life God has entrusted to her with her whole body and spirit. Everything she experiences is also a shared experience with her child. Mother and child are connected physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Science is just beginning to understand this unique connection and it is far more complex than ever imagined.
Our Heavenly Father wanted the place and role of the Mother to be one of tenderness and strength. God gave women the role of life bearers. In this way Mothers are set apart for the special ministry of Motherhood.
“Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.” Genesis 3:20
Psalm 127:3 tells us;
“Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord; and the fruit of the womb is his reward.”
The word “Heritage” is defined as legacy; an allotted portion.
We cannot know what portion our children will leave us. A Mother imparts her portions of love, wisdom and grace into her child in the hope that her portions will grow ever larger in the heart of her child. That is why a Mother nurtures her child so intensely. It is her hope that through her efforts her child will leave even greater portions of love, wisdom and grace as a legacy to her.
Mothers know intuitively that each child possess great and wonderful possibilities. Possibilities that can only be realized through her care, love and sacrifice.
Some of us are not raised by our biological mothers. Yet that does in no way diminish the mother-child bond and love connection. Things like war and disease and social discord result in many children being left in need of mothers.
So God puts it on the heart of a woman to reach out to these little ones to claim them for their own. They too are life bearers as they bear the hurt and loss and difficulties their child had suffered before finding sanctuary in their arms. They mend and restore such children and replace hurt with happiness and conflict with confidence.
Noted psychologist Erich Fromm observed;
“The Mother-child relationship is paradoxical and mysterious. It requires the most intense love on the part of the mother to draw the child close to her, yet this same love must help the child to grow away from her in order that the child become fully independent.”
God placed Mothers in a position to be a part of the many firsts in our lives. Our first tooth, our first steps, or first words, our first laugh and our first tears. God wanted Mothers to enjoy these things with Him as He brought them to be.
Mary was there for Jesus first miracle at a wedding in Cana even though Jesus said it was not yet His time the miracle still happened. Somehow Mary knew it was time for this first in Jesus life and ministry. John 2:1-5
Jeremiah 1:5 tells us;
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you”
God knows us before He places us within our Mothers. He knows full well the prefect woman to be our Mother. How her character and nature will be imprinted upon us in order to give us our unique traits and features. God uses our Mothers to design us in becoming the people He desires.
From our Mothers we learn kindness, forgiveness, sharing, patience and love. Mothers are more than teachers and their children more than pupils.
As H. W. Beecher an American abolitionist preacher said…” The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.”
Every child learns differently and applies what is learnt in different ways as they step out of the nest. But they take with them the lessons taught to them by their mothers.
American Presbyterian Minister W.R. Wallace wrote a poem in 1865 which many people still quote today. He said… “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world”.
The Mothers of our world are the most influential people in shaping our children. God has seen fit to entrust Mothers with this great responsibility. Mothers have real power. Mothers look at their children as a continual work in progress even when they have grown and are on their own. Mothers can’t help but be interested in whom their children are dating and how they are doing in the working world. They continue to insert their influence right into the next generation as grandmothers.
Famous playwright and author Florida Scott-Maxwell said… “No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.”
I guess that means there may still be hope for some of us if only in our Mothers eyes?
Songwriter Joel Hemphill’s “He’s Still Working on Me” can be sung with a mother’s influence in mind.
“He’s still working on me to make me what I ought to be”… some children might substitute the word Mom’s still working on me to make we what I ought to be.
You see Mother’s like our Heavenly Father see the greatness that is within us even if we don’t.
A Mothers work is never done and for that reason many wise Mothers point their children to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. Mom’s do this knowing that Jesus will finish what they started. Bringing us to faith in God.
My Mother taught me to pray, to sing, to dance to give and forgive and to discover Jesus. I hope that yours has done likewise and that you are repeating the process.
God loves our Mothers more than we could possibly know. His Bible is full of wonderful examples for today’s mothers to emulate. Hannah, Eve, Mary, Deborah, Sarah, Rebekah, Ruth, Jochebed, Rachel and Elizabeth to name a few notable Mother’s.
There are many, many more.
Don’t worry Mothers you are never in this alone, your God is there right at your side guiding and protecting your little ones. He wants what you want; a child that grows to know the full measure of His love as you demonstrate your love to your child.
Know that He has written your names in the Lambs Book of Life as those faithful women who have been life bearers to your children and His children.
Amen.
