Yesterday was Mother's Day. It is a day laden with meaning, layered with baggage, a day causing grief and guilt and joy. It is also not a church day or celebration, rather it is a civil (and some would say morphed into a commercial enterprise in a typically Americamn way). Julia Ward Howe wrote a Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870, responding to the carnage and devastation of the civil war. Here is part of it:
From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Not exactly FTD and Hallmark, is it? But it is also based on a view that women were more civilized, and had a civilising effect on society as a whole, and on men in general.
The prophet Isiaih refers to God as like a nursing mother: "Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for teh child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you." (Isaiah 49:15. Paul describes himself as a woman in labor in Galatians 4:19. "My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you...."
I do not want ever to underestimate the work and sacrifice of mothers (and fathers). But I also do not want to, and do not want the church to, inflict pain on those who for whatever reasons are not parents, or for whom relationships with mothers are strained, hurtful, or absent. I do hope that we can see God as a model for parenting, and open up the images to include not just biological mothers, or even women who act as mothers to us, but all people (regardles of gender and circumstance) who show nurture and love to us.
