My mom was not crazy about Mother's Day because the sermon text was often Proverbs 31 which lists the virtues of a good wife. Really, if you want to be wholly depressed see the list of activities of a woman in charge of a household 3,000 years ago! (Surely, even then, this was a description of an ideal never fully reached.)
But in truth, my mother's greatest virtues were in that reading and she lived these precepts all her life, though I doubt she ever even noticed them tucked into the list amid the weaving and the vineyard planting in Proverbs 31.
Beginning in verse 25 I found my mother: Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed;
She did this through decades of challenges and pain, constant in her faith that her life had purpose even if it was not the life she planned. As she worked her way through her baggage and found her way to a life of glowing purpose both for her children and for the other lives she touched, she showed us by her choices and values to trust God in all things. God gave her many assets and abilities and she poured them out on all who knew her. Not everyone recognized the blessings she brought, but she learned to let go of the expectation that she could change anyone. And she grew ever more certain that in God anyone, at any time,and in any place, can be wholly changed, transformed, redeemed and repurposed to live the life God created them to live. She was grateful to be blooming where she was planted and sewing what seeds as she might. And those seed are still growing today.
Mothers come in many packages and in many ways. Mothers of birth might die young or be so damaged as to be unable to tend their children. If that was your mom, my prayer for you is that you find in that what good you can. And that, if you have not identified a mother of choice, ask God to point her out. (My mother's generosity in encouraging me to have women friends of all ages gave me ample opportunities to value the "other mothers" that bless us if we choose.)
Gracious and loving Father, thank you for all the mothers of my friends, for they were chosen by you to be a special blessing in the world through the lives of their sons and daughters. Thank You for planting us where might bloom as Your daughters and sons and let the seeds of Your love flow through us into all of Your children that decorate, tend and inform our lives showering blessings upon us. AMEN
But in truth, my mother's greatest virtues were in that reading and she lived these precepts all her life, though I doubt she ever even noticed them tucked into the list amid the weaving and the vineyard planting in Proverbs 31.
Beginning in verse 25 I found my mother: Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed;
She did this through decades of challenges and pain, constant in her faith that her life had purpose even if it was not the life she planned. As she worked her way through her baggage and found her way to a life of glowing purpose both for her children and for the other lives she touched, she showed us by her choices and values to trust God in all things. God gave her many assets and abilities and she poured them out on all who knew her. Not everyone recognized the blessings she brought, but she learned to let go of the expectation that she could change anyone. And she grew ever more certain that in God anyone, at any time,and in any place, can be wholly changed, transformed, redeemed and repurposed to live the life God created them to live. She was grateful to be blooming where she was planted and sewing what seeds as she might. And those seed are still growing today.
Mothers come in many packages and in many ways. Mothers of birth might die young or be so damaged as to be unable to tend their children. If that was your mom, my prayer for you is that you find in that what good you can. And that, if you have not identified a mother of choice, ask God to point her out. (My mother's generosity in encouraging me to have women friends of all ages gave me ample opportunities to value the "other mothers" that bless us if we choose.)
Gracious and loving Father, thank you for all the mothers of my friends, for they were chosen by you to be a special blessing in the world through the lives of their sons and daughters. Thank You for planting us where might bloom as Your daughters and sons and let the seeds of Your love flow through us into all of Your children that decorate, tend and inform our lives showering blessings upon us. AMEN
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