Mothers: Nurturing love beyond instincts.
Photo by
Julia_Sudnitskaya
On Sunday, May 12, one hundred countries worldwide will celebrate Mother’s Day.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
Mothers need only four words to take control — over tycoons, kings, presidents, bureaucrats, military top brass, TV and movie stars, celebrities, sports stars, or maybe even gangland heavies…
Yes, four simple words: ‘Because I’m your mother!’
As a parent and a pastor, I’ve often seen mothers’ strengths, strains and, at times, sacrifices, underscoring how we are conceived and nourished in love — even if we’ve been unplanned — rather than from the survival instincts that rule the animal world.
This is not to minimise the care of animal mothers, who readily adopt non-negotiable aggression to protect their young the moment we happen to stray too close or come between them. Even though their young can fend for themselves years before even the most advanced of us humans.
As we gaze with wonder at our sleeping infants — totally innocent and totally dependent — we can never fully appreciate the time investments ahead of us.
It’s natural to celebrate when those investments pay off, but we need to consider mothers whose care carries extra weight, like ongoing demands from disabilities or serious illnesses.
Other weights may suddenly emerge, as one lady found out when telling a neighbour of her son’s 21st birthday, only to learn that her neighbour’s long-deceased son would be of a similar age. Coming to terms with outliving our children is so hard, maybe understandable from illness, but much harder when they are taken from us through carelessness, criminal malice or warfare.
Let’s also be sensitive to those for whom motherhood may be stifled by an inability to conceive or whose hopes and expectations are dashed by a miscarriage or by an unexpected stillbirth. These traumatic discoveries may trigger feelings of failure, anxiety, guilt or even anger at somehow being punished by God because somebody must be blamed.
No blame can be attached to these tragic events, and words alone cannot express enough comfort, but God knows the depth of our pain. Easter reminds us that despite being innocent of all accusations and guilty only of first-degree love, his son Jesus was violently and publicly executed. However, by returning to life, he has made his grace freely available to extract the poison from our pain and to equip us with credibility and compassion as we let other folks know that he is there for them whatever happens.
— Noel Mitaxa
On behalf of a church near you, inviting you to explore God’s love.
25°C