Honor Your Mom

Mother’s Day, had its origin in 1908 when Anna Jarvis held a memorial service for her mother who had passed away three years previously.  It was Jarvis’ intent to honor her own mother by having a day set aside to honor mothers, “the person who has done more for you than anyone in the world.”

Today’s news stories, however, reveal a horribly twisted and sick society where the idea of honoring mothers and celebrating motherhood is obscured in some quarters by the shocking desire, personified by Emily Letts, to celebrate abortion and honor those mothers who choose to kill their unborn children, film the process, and then express pride over what they have done.  And there are masses of people who laud such an action.  So much for the idea of a mother being the person who does more for you than anyone in the world!

One can only hope that such devilish jubilation might turn to godly sorrow before an accounting is made before the judgment seat of God.

In keeping with Anna Jarvis’ intent, I want to express some thoughts about honoring mothers in the most meaningful way possible.  To achieve that, it is important that we focus on honoring them for the significant things that really matter.

This is the first Mother’s Day in my life when my mother is not within reach of a phone call if not close enough to reach out and touch.  She was promoted to glory just one month ago, at the age of ninety-two.  As a child I thought she was beautiful and I loved her as most children love their mothers.  I was dependent upon her for so many things and felt loved and secure.  I confess that, on some levels at least, I fell out of love with her when I became a teenager.  Ours was a stormy relationship and in retrospect I know that it was more my fault than hers.  With the advantage of some maturity and experience in life, I fell back in love with my Mom as I became an adult. She became beautiful to me once again and I regarded her as a re-discovered treasure.

As a child, our house was always clean, my clothes were always washed and neatly folded, and I never went hungry.  Mom was a good cook and an excellent baker.  She made the greatest bread, pies, cakes and cookies.  She was still doing that even in her later years.  I always came home from my extended visits to her a few pounds heavier.  She would bake delicious foods.  She would set them before me and when I protested she would say, “Eat it.  I’m your mother!”

Now my Mom is gone.  If you were to ask me what I remember most, and what I cherish about my memories of her I would not even mention her cooking, or her housekeeping.  Instead I would tell you about my mother’s heart.  I would tell you how much she loved my Dad and her family.  I would tell you of her tender heart and a love and compassion that even her beloved animals benefited from, almost as much as her children.  Her birds and dogs and cats received more care and attention than any animal has a right to receive.  And with great joy I would tell you how she came to faith in Christ in her later years (she was more than eighty years of age) and how she came to love Him more and more as life got harder and harder for her.

I would tell you that the last words i heard my Mom say in this life came during my farewell after my recent trip to California.  I said, “I love you Mom, but Jesus loves you more.” And her last words to me were, “I love you both”

Because those are the things I am going to remember about my Mom, that’s what I want to honor her for now.

Let me suggest to you that above all, if you have a godly mother, honor your mom because she loves god.

The Old Testament Scriptures record several hundred commands in the Jewish law.  When He was asked which one was the most important one, Jesus responded in Matthew 22, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” 

If you have a mother who loves God and honors Him with her life, then I hope you will honor her for that … not just this weekend, but every day.

It has always been a curiosity to me that 31st chapter of Proverbs sketches the “ideal woman” in terms that may tend to make most women despair;

She is a woman who raises and butchers the pig, brings in the bacon, fries it up in the pan, puts it on slices of homemade bread with tomatoes and lettuce grown in her own garden, thus serving the best BLT sandwiches while leaving the kitchen spotless, the laundry folded and put away and everything else you could possibly want a wife and mother to do.  And she looks like a million dollars through the whole process.

But at the end of the chapter we find the most important characteristic of the ideal woman: “charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” (Proverbs 31.30)

If you have a Mom who fears the Lord, then you be sure to praise her for it.

• She has gotten what so many others in the world don’t get.
• She understands that the most important thing in life is to love God with all her heart.
• That makes her a very wise woman, and a woman worthy of your honor. So honor her for her love for God.