Here's What I'll Say On Mother's Day When We Gather With Our Church
Every year on Mother’s Day I stand before our church family and say something. I love the women in our church so much. It’s a gift to look into the crowd and into their eyes and to know many of their stories very well. And because I know those stories, I know what I say must speak to both grief and joy, sorrow and celebration. I pray about it for weeks, talk about with other women, and hope that with God’s help I can honor every woman in the room well.
This year we’re obviously meeting virtually, so I recorded my remarks yesterday. Here they are:
Obviously, today is Mother’s Day. Every May we take a moment to pause and thank our moms for giving us life and we joyfully celebrate the moms amongst us. In this church family there is a lot of young life to celebrate, a lot of sweet moms to honor!
But it’s a hard day too—let’s just get that out in the open and be honest. In our church family many have experienced the loss of a mom, the loss of a child, or the absence of a child so deeply desired, so achingly longed for.
This day is bittersweet. Is there anything so piercing as the subject of motherhood? Anything else so strong? Any other relationship—whether you are a child or a mom or someone who wants to be a mom—that sparks such strong emotions? It doesn’t have an equal.
So today, we want to pause and do two things as a church family:
First we want to acknowledge
The moms amongst us who have lost children—either because the child passed away all too soon, or because the baby was lost in the womb.
The many women in our family who long to be moms, but are not yet.
The children who have had to say goodbye to their own moms, way too early. We know there are so many of you and we see you.
And finally, we know there are moms and children who are both walking roads mingled with both grief and joy: fostering, adoption, and other relationships that are gifts, and yet were forged through trauma.
There are many and varied reasons one might feel pain today. I’m going to read a psalm and then pray through it for all of us.
Then secondly, we also want to thank God for the gift of motherhood, the gift of mothers, and the gift of children. We want to praise him for the gift of life. He is worthy of our praise—life and motherhood are worthy of our joy!
If you have a Bible you can turn with me to Psalm 13. I will read it and then pray through it. I chose this psalm because it has a pattern that’s instructive for all of us who lament or grieve.
There are three parts to the psalm, which you will notice:
First the psalmist—it’s David—laments. He’s not afraid to say what’s hard and heartbreaking. He’s honest with the Lord about his anguish.
Secondly, David asks the Lord for help. He makes his requests clear. He knows that God is the giver of gifts and so he boldly asks.
And then thirdly, David recommits or reminds himself of his firm trust in the Lord, even in his anguish. He praises God, even in his hardship.
Read with me:
Psalm 13
1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.
Pray with me:
Father God,
We lament together with those in our faith family who lament. We grieve the loss of life and the lives that you have not yet given that we so desire. Lord, only you fully know all of the heartache amongst us—but even the limited glimpse we have tells us there are many in our family who have sorrow in their hearts on Mother’s Day. We mourn with them and we weep with them.
Lord God, we ask you to look on them, to answer them. God, would you give light to their eyes, as David says. Would you provide comfort and tender care for the moms who have lost babies, for the women who long to be moms, for the children who have lost moms? Jesus, would you be near to them and minister deeply to them? Father, would you give children to the childless?
Lord we trust your unfailing love. No matter what, our hearts rejoice in your salvation. We sing your praise. Whatever comes to pass, we say with certainty that you have been good to us.
In the name of our risen Savior Jesus, Amen
It’s truly a bittersweet thing to say with Job that God both gives and takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21). It’s one of the many paradoxes in the Christian life—holding both sorrow and joy in the same hand.
But we do rejoice with children and mothers in our faith family. Indeed, children are a gift from the Lord (Psalm 127:3)! And the Lord calls us to honor our mothers (Exodus 20:12, Ephesians 6:2), which we gladly do. So as children and fathers and husbands, we arise and we call our moms blessed (Proverbs 31:28). Thank you for mothering us.
And I want to thank God for all the women who are participating in this online worship service. Being a woman, made in the image of God, is a gift. I thank God for each one of you. Whether you have given life biologically or not, or through fostering or adoption or not, you are a life-giver. God made us to give life spiritually — and you each give life as you serve one another, gather together in Bible studies, CORE groups, Gospel Communities. There is immeasurable spiritual life being forged by the hands of the women at RP. We are all so thankful for that!
Whether today is heavy or happy for you, together we bless the name of the Lord. Because we know that he—who is the Giver of Life, and also a Father who lost his child’s life, and a Son who gave his life—sees and knows and holds you closely in his kind hands.
May you feel his nearness, his pleasure, his peace all day long today.