Mother’s Day should be a time of remembrance and a time to give thanks. Mothers are special gifts from God. That is obvious as we see the importance of mothers in the Bible. A minister gave this tribute: My mother practices what I preach. The former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Winston Church, responded to a list published of his teachers, You have omitted the greatest of my teachers - my mother. Let’s take time to consider the importance of this special day.
In the midst of unbearable suffering for the spiritual needs of the world, Jesus provided for the physical needs of His mother. John 19:26-27, ... standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. William Barclay, There is something infinitely moving in the fact that Jesus in the agony of the cross, in the moment when the salvation of the world hung in the balance, thought of the loneliness of his mother in the days when he was taken away.
The Bible clearly reveals the characteristics of motherhood in the life of Jesus’ mother, Mary.
• Trust
▸ Luke 1:38, And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
And the angel departed from her.
▸ She was submissive with a focus not on the why or the how but on the Who.
• Fear
▸ Luke 1:31-33, And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name
Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the
throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there
will be no end.
▸ She was very young, just a teenager, a virgin and would have a child without a human father.
• Responsibility
▸ Luke 2:52, And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.
▸ Mary raised Jesus according to the Law, circumcised on the eight day, and taught to celebrate religious
feasts.
• Misunderstanding
▸ Luke 2:49, And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my
Father’s house?”
▸ Had Mary forgotten the words of the angel or couldn’t grasp Who had been entrusted to her?
• Unbelief
▸ Mark 3:21, And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his
mind.”
▸ Even Jesus’ mother, did not understand who Jesus is.
▸ Sometimes, mothers want safety over service.
• Pain
▸ The prophet Simeon declared to Mary, Luke 2:35, a sword will pierce through your own soul.
▸ How could this widowed mother stand before her son hanging on a tree? Her grief would be like a sword
piercing through her heart.
All mothers experience some if not all of these characteristics found in Mary. Motherhood is not without pain but I think most mothers would say, It was worth it. It must be an exciting and frightening time as mothers sense the change in their bodies and feel the child kick in the womb. That's the beauty of motherhood - at one with the child from conception. Fathers experience parenting second-hand until midnight feedings. Yet, there can be pains of motherhood beyond childbirth. The child so dearly loved was taken prematurely. The child with such promise had lesser interests in mind. The child a mother prayed for and sang to from conception, rejected instruction and has not turned back.
Motherhood is such an important responsibility. I pray this Mother’s Day will be a reminder for each of us to honor them through remembrance or in person when possible. Consider the thoughts of Charles Spurgeon a British pastor in the 1800s remembered, While we were yet little children, we sat round the table and read verse by verse, and she explained the Scripture to us ... I remember on one occasion her praying thus: "Now, Lord, if my children go on in their sins, it will not be from ignorance that they perish. And my soul must bear a swift witness against them at the day of judgment if they lay not hold of Christ." That thought of a mother's bearing swift witness against me pierced my conscience and stirred my heart. This pleading with them for God and with God for them is the true way to bring children to Christ.
Leland Wang, a Chinese evangelist in the 1900s told of a time when his mother was going to discipline him for disobedience. He ran off taunting his mother because she could not catch him. She stood still and said, I feel ashamed of myself that I have brought up a boy who is not willing to be disciplined by his mother when he does wrong, so I must punish myself. And she began to whip her bare arms. This so touched Leland's heart that he ran back to his mother, threw himself into her arms, and pleaded with her not to hurt herself but to punish him. Mr. Wang says that, as he grew older, the memory of this incident helped him to understand the great love of the Lord Jesus Christ who willingly took our place on the cross.
My mother wrote notes throughout her Bible. Three that stood out to me were on the opening leaf: Be not weary in well doing; A saved person is safe forever!; FAITH - Forsaking All I Trust Him; and Forsake not the assembly of ourselves together but not in a movie theater. I can still remember when I was 5 years old, I asked Mother if God could see me. She said, Yes, God can see you. I crawled under the washing machine and asked her, Can God see me now? She said, God can see you wherever you are. That was my first lesson on the omnipresence of God. I thank the Lord every day for my mother and how God blessed me through her. What a day it will be when I can thank her again, face to face.
I know godly mothers are worthy of much more honor than they receive. May we honor the Lord by honoring our mothers, today.