Mother's Day: Creating Joyful Motherhood (Text: Proverbs 23:15-25; Ephesians 4:17-32)
By John A. Huffman, Jr.
Once again it is Mother's Day.
It's a nostalgic moment for me, as it is for most of us. My earliest memories of Mother's Day go back to our little white Cape Cod home in Arlington, Massachusetts, surrounded by the white picket fence.
In those days, it was the custom, at least in New England, that on Mother's Day you wore a flower. It was a token of respect to your mother. A white carnation in her memory if she was dead, a red carnation to celebrate her presence if she was living. I'm sort of sorry that custom has gone out of style.
We've celebrated today by acknowledging the oldest mother present, and the newest, and the one who has come from the greatest distance. Each has received a beautiful rose.
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Our theme is "Creating Joyful Motherhood." Our text is two verses from Proverbs:
Listen to your father, who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old (
Proverbs 23:22).
May your father and mother be glad; may she who gave you birth rejoice (
Proverbs 23:25).
My intention is not to dampen the effervescent atmosphere of this service. At the same time, we must deal realistically with the fact that joyful motherhood is not the experience of every mother.
Geographic distance takes its toll. How many of us have living mothers today and how much we would give to be closer to them. Some of the joy is gone from this day because we cannot enjoy their presence, and we know how much they'd love to be with us.
Aging has a way of taking its toll. One of the experiences of pastoring that I enjoy least is walking through the halls of a nursing home -- however upscale or downscale in price and quality -- sniffing the acrid smell of urine in the air, hearing the moans and groans of persons almost animal in nature and seeing, in room after room, persons once vital, alert and rational, many of whom are now only a faint memory of that once vivacious young mother. I am reminded of these words, anonymous in their origin:
What do you see, nurses, what do you see?
What are you thinking when you're looking at me?
A crabby old woman not very wise,
Uncertain of habit and faraway eyes.
I'm a small child of ten with a mother and father,
Brothers and sisters who love one another.
A bride in her twenties -- my heart gives a leap,
Remembering the vow that I promised to keep.
A woman of thirty, my young now grow fast,
Bound to each other with ties that should last.
At forty, my sons have grown and have gone,
But my man is beside me to see I don't mourn.
At fifty, once more babies play around my knees;
Again we know children, my husband and me.
I'm an old woman now and nature is cruel;
'Tis her jest to make old age look like a fool.
The body it crumbles, grace and vigor depart;
There is now a stone where I once had a heart.
But inside this old carcass a young girl still dwells,