A mother’s love
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. — Luke 14:26
I’ve always thought this to be one of the strangest verses in Holy Scripture. It is also the first one I effectually heard. The solemn occasion was a regular Sunday church service, something I had heretofore hardly attended. I’ve rarely missed on since, however, because of this one that featured my mother’s baptism.
Mom was in her early forties, struggling through her second marriage. It wasn’t working out, so they turned to God for a season, about as long as the baseball season of my sophomore year in college. But it brought me to the church that Sunday, and once I was able to cut through the hyperbole to the heart of the Gospel, I became a follower of Jesus Christ.
It is strange and wonderful what a mother’s love can do. Mom had proved hers to us over the years. She gave birth to me in the first place, when a backroom abortion would have been the road most traveled by a poor, unwed mother. She fought for my two sisters, figuratively, through a myriad of family dysfunctions, to help them turn out right. She fought for my little brother, literally, killing a dog that bit him, with her bare hands. Don’t mess with my mama, or her offspring!
We all loved her very much, because she first loved us. Her love was unconditional, even when we screwed up (although she lived under a delusion that her firstborn was sinlessly perfect). Her love was sacrificial, never keeping much for herself, always giving things away. Her love is everlasting, having made a permanent impact on our lives, which we now show in the way we love and raise our children, her grandchildren.
Like baptism, a mother’s love is a pretty good illustration of the Gospel. But the Gospel does demand a love for Christ which is higher than a mother’s, or father’s, or sister’s, or brother’s, or a wife’s, or a husband’s love. Yet I would not have known this, if not for my mother’s love and her time of turning to the Lord, and that strange but true verse.
Mother died three days after Andrea and I married. She was too sick to come to the wedding. We were on our honeymoon in Las Vegas when we got the early morning call. It was a labor of love to return home to Arkansas, then back to her family home in Georgia, to lay her to rest, right next to her mother, who also had lived a colorful but troubled life, well-healed by love.
Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, a member of the trinity of high and holy days in the church, along with Easter and Christmas. You should be there, with your mother, if possible. If she’s not a regular churchgoer, take her. If you’re not a regular churchgoer, go with her. If she is not living here on earth anymore, remember her by attending the church of your choice. Maybe you’ll hear a strange verse from the Bible that captivates your imagination until it captures your soul. For it is an amazing grace, what a word from God, and a mother’s love, can do.