May 14, 2023
Morning Service

Ephesians 6 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ² “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— ³ “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.

    Who doesn’t want to live a long life on this earth and here we have the key to it! We are living in a world where honoring anyone is becoming a fast-dying practice. In a world where no one can agree on how, when or even if to discipline a child the practice has largely become neglected. So we see growing disrespect for parents much of which is directed towards the mother, why because current statistics show: 

80% of single parents in the US are mothers,

52.9% are millennials, 15.6 million children live in a single mother household. In times past mothers and fathers shared the responsibilities of child raising. But today many mothers have the brunt of the responsibility with not even a father figure present.   

     A mother’s love is like no other. In the book of Exodus we see the birth of Moses. Because the Israelites were increasing in number the King of Egypt ordered midwives to kill all male babies but two hero midwives risk their own safety and allowed the males to live. So then Pharaoh gave the order for every Hebrew boy that was born to be thrown into the Nile. When Moses was born his Jochebed his mother hid him for three months. When she could no longer hide him she made a basket of rushes and set him adrift in the Nile. He was found in the reeds by attendants of Pharaoh’s daughter who felt sorry for him. Moses’ sister had been secretly been following the basket asked Pharaoh’s daughter if she wanted her to find a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby. So by God’s direction Moses was given to his own mother to raise and she was even paid to do so. A mother’s love and the motherly instinct of midwives and Pharoah’s daughter saved Moses who would gain the respect of Pharoah and eventually lead the Hebrew people out of captivity.  

    For all that mother’s do for us to bring us into the world, they nurture, feed, protect, encourage and so much more. They deserve our unending love and devotion. Ever get close to a mother chicken or goose that has young? How about an old sow with young? Even the smallest bird will fight to defend their young. They will risk their own life to protect their offspring. Some birds will feign injury to lure danger away from the young.                                                                                                                                                                                      

 Proverbs 1:8 Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.
9 They are a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.

Read Proverbs 31:10-31 It tells of the wife of noble character. Vs 31 says: Honor her for all that her hands have done, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.                                                          

In 1 Kings 3 we have the story of Solomon’s wisdom. Two women gave birth a few days apart and during the night one accidentally rolled over on and suffocated her baby. When she discovered what she had done she swapped the babies. They were brought before Solomon to sort out as each claimed the living baby. Solomon asked for a sword and ordered the baby cut in half and each woman be given half.  ²⁶ The woman whose son was alive was deeply moved out of love for her son and said to the king, “Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don’t kill him!” But the other said, “Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!”²⁷ Then the king gave his ruling: “Give the living baby to the first woman. Do not kill him; she is his mother.”  A mother’s true love is a dead giveaway, she would rather give up her child than to see him killed.       The Lord says to his people...                                                                                                            

Isaiah 49:¹⁵ “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! 

What the Bible says about love sums up perfectly a mother’s love: 1 Corinthians 13: ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

History of Mother’s Day three events contributed to the day:                                                                   

A. In 1858, when Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker, organized “Mother’s Work Days” to improve the sanitation and avert deaths from disease-bearing insects and seepage of polluted water.                                                                    

B. In 1872, when Boston poet, pacifist and women’s suffragist Julia Ward Howe established a special day for mothers –and for peace– not long after the bloody Franco-Prussian War.                                   

C. In 1905, when Ann Jarvis died. Her daughter, Anna, decided to memorialize her mother’s lifelong activism, and began a campaign that culminated in 1914 when Congress passed a Mother’s Day resolution.  Each woman and all of these events have contributed to the present occasion now celebrated on the second Sunday in May. The cause of world peace was the impetus for Julia Ward Howe’s establishment, over a century ago, of a special day for mothers. Following unsuccessful efforts to pull together an international pacifist conference after the Franco-Prussian War, Howe began to think of a global appeal to women. “While the war was still in progress,” she wrote, she keenly felt the “cruel and unnecessary character of the contest.” She believed, as any woman might, that it could have been settled without bloodshed. And, she wondered, “Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?” Howe’s version of Mother’s Day, which served as an occasion for advocating peace, was held successfully in Boston and elsewhere for several years, but eventually lost popularity and disappeared from public notice in the years preceding World War I. For Ann Jarvis, also known as “Mother Jarvis,” community improvement by mothers was only a beginning. Throughout the Civil War she organized women’s brigades, asking her workers to do all they could without regard for which side their men had chosen. And, in 1868, she took the initiative to heal the bitter rifts between her Confederate and Union neighbors. The younger Anna Jarvis was only twelve years old in 1878 when she listened to her mother teach a Sunday school lesson on mothers in the Bible. “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother’s day,” the senior Jarvis said. “There are many days for men, but none for mothers.” Following her mother’s death, Anna Jarvis embarked on a remarkable campaign. She poured out a constant stream of letters to men of prominence — President William Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt among them — and enlisted considerable help from Philadelphia merchant John Wannamaker. By May of 1907, a Mother’s Day service had been arranged on the second Sunday in May at the Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia, where Mother Jarvis had taught. That same day a special service was held at the Wannamaker Auditorium in Philadelphia, which could seat no more than a third of the 15,000 people who showed up. The custom spread to churches in 45 states and in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Mexico and Canada. The Governor of West Virginia proclaimed Mother’s Day in 1912; Pennsylvania’s governor in 1913 did the same. The following year saw the Congressional Resolution, which was promptly signed by President Woodrow Wilson. Mother’s Day has endured. It serves now, as it originally did, to recognize the contributions of women. Mother’s Day, like the job of “mothering,” is varied and diverse. Perhaps that’s only appropriate for a day honoring the multiple ways women find to nurture their families, and the ways in which so many have nurtured their communities, their countries, and the larger world.