The Anchor Holds – Mother's Day 2004

But no matter how much hope I had for my children – I could never come close to the hope of the woman that carried them and gave birth to them. In my mind – I can still see the look of pure, holy, love that came across my wife’s face as each child was placed in her arms – that look never changed through the birth of all three of them – a look that I am sure many of you Mothers here today understand in the deepest corners of your heart.

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder – I hope you never take one single breath for granted – and when you get a chance to sit it out or dance…I hope you dance.

My own Mother gave me those words for Christmas just this last year. And Mom – you have been a place of hope for me my entire life – an anchor – a never-ending source of love that I know I can always depend on –

Have you ever watched a roomful of children? If one of them falls down and skins their knee – they get up and run to Mom. If they are proud of something they have just done – they look up to see if their Mother was watching. If they feel left out, or sad – they go looking for Mom to cheer them up.

Children depend on their Mother! They know they can count on her!

As children of God – we need to understand that we can depend on Him. God’s love for us is the only love we have that will surpass a Mother’s love.

Turn with me to Isaiah Chapter 40 – beginning in verse 28

“Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He will not grow weary, and His understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.

Even youths grow tired and weary, and the young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. The will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

Our hope is in the Lord. He will not grow weary. God is an anchor we can depend on. He will never leave us nor forsake us. He loves us so much He sent His Son to die for us.

I say these things and then men have a general understanding of what I am talking about – but the women – they truly understand.

About 6:00 A.M. on a Wednesday morning James Lawson of Running Springs, California left home to apply for a job. About an hour later his thirty-six-year-old wife, Patsy left for her fifth grade teaching job down the mountain in Riverside, accompanied by her two children, five-year-old Susan and two-year-old Gerald, to be dropped off at the babysitter’s.

Unfortunately, they never got that far. Eight and a half hours later the man found his wife and daughter dead in their wrecked car, upside down in a cold mountain stream. His two-year-old son was just barely alive in the forty-eight degree water.

But in that death the character of a mother was revealed in a most dramatic and heart-rending way. For when the father scrambled down the cliff to what he was sure were the cries of his dying wife, he found her locked in death, holding her little boy’s head just above water in the submerged car. For eight and a half hours Patsy Lawson had held her beloved toddler afloat and had finally died, her body almost frozen in death in that position of self-giving love, holding her baby up to breathe. She died that another might live. That’s the essence of a mother’s love.