Mother’s Love

07 May 2009

On Mother’s Day we pause to think of the woman who gave us birth or took care of us when we were at the most helpless stage of our life. Think about it, who but a person with a mother’s heart can love a toothless, incontinent, extremely demanding being? Even better, years later they continue to love that being when they turn into a teenager!

One of my favourite passages of Scripture is Isaiah 49:15-16: ‘Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.’

This passage concerns the promised restoration of the chosen people of God. Isaiah foretold a time of discipline because of sin. God’s ‘tough love’ would allow the people to live with the consequences of their choices and actions. Next, Isaiah foretold a time when God would restore them. But because of that time of discipline the people would be so disturbed they would feel as though God had forgotten them. And so God uses the image of ‘mother’s love’ to communicate that it would be impossible for him to ‘forget’ them.

Jesus also uses the image of mother’s love to express his concern for people: ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing’ (Matthew 23:37).

The love and nurture of mothers for their offspring is a great picture-tool that God uses to help us understand how deeply he loves us. God does not have a problem with being likened to a mother. Why then is it hard for some people to think of God as a mother?

In a group devotional time we recently went through the alphabet and considered the names and nature of God. ‘A—Almighty, Awesome’; ‘B—Beloved, Beautiful’ … When I got to ‘M’ I paused to think of something new and considered ‘Mother’ (after all, when I got to ‘F’ I quickly thought ‘Father’). After a small struggle with myself a new dimension of God’s nature opened to me.

Perhaps if you try this exercise it will open a new thought about God for you as well. Think quickly of the positive traits of a mother’s love. Can you see those traits in the Person of God? Thank God for designing mothers’ love so that we could know him better. And while we’re at it, thank God for mothers.

By Debi Bell (from War Cry)
* Debi is Territorial President of Women’s Ministries