May 9, 2021
We love because God first loved us… - 1 John 4:19
Whose love did we first know? Even before even knowing God, our mother’s loved paved the way to illustrate the type of love that we would one day know from above. A mother’s love is typically the first we know, especially of a selfless type of love. The love that can look at a handful of dead flowers picked lovingly by a child, and appreciate it as much as a live and beautiful bouquet.
Motherhood not only paves the way for children to know the love of God, but in a way it helps the mother to understand more of the nature of the sacrificial love of God. It may take some time to realize and appreciate those aspects of a mother’s love, because in the daily grind of the early years of motherhood, all we really want it a break. However, as we grow we look back, and we think of what mothers have done, of the children they have raised, and we give thanks for the spiritual calling to be a mother.
Motherhood is a beautiful and priceless gift, but at the same time it surprisingly takes on the sacrificial nature to die to self for the love of another.
Motherhood is more than the mandate to raise the next generation, it is an unending invitation to take on the sacrificial love of God, by laying down one’s life for another. Motherhood is a saying “no” to the cadence of selfishness, and “yes” to the quiet rhythms of love. It is laying down pride, and persisting in payer, surrendering to greed, and growing into grace.
Motherhood is pacing the floor with a crying baby in the dark of night, or holding a tearful teenager in the depths of disappointment. Motherhood is wiping bottoms and noses, cleaning floors countless times a day, and listening and laughing at the same joke over, and over, and over again.
Motherhood is a daily decision to paint the ordinary moments of our days with the extraordinary love of God, a love that sacrificed everything in sending the Son to be our salvation. Motherhood knows such sacrifice, and on days like today, we give thanks for the love that taught us how much God loves each of us. May we pour out love like God on others that they too would know the love that leads to salvation.
Happy Mother’s Day,
Sam