Due To The Emphasis In This Study On the connection between honoring your father and mother and honoring our Heavenly Father, I fear we may overlook the vital role of our mothers and the importance of giving them proper respect and consideration. Our mothers and our elder sisters/aunts in the ecclesia should never be overlooked. Our mothers are quite often the family’s emotional leader. They teach us to love God as much as our fathers may teach us to understand Him.
Let us be honest. In our community it is more often the men that receive the honor above women. They have more recognizable and visual positions. Men have a greater avenue to be heard than do our sisters. But if the family is a guide for ecclesial behavior, we should equally cherish our sisters and our brothers and recognize both of their roles in the support and service of God. There are no qualifications and no caveats on the statement to honor your father and mother. Each is to be honored and given proper respect. As a child is commanded to listen to his father and forsake not his mother, we are to do the same in our families and ecclesias.
Deborah
We start with consideration of one particular mother, Judges 5:7 NIV: Village life in Israel ceased, ceased until I, Deborah, arose a mother in Israel.
What are the characteristics of Deborah? They are decisiveness, encouragement, support, and humility. How many of our ecclesias have a mother who fills the necessity of emotional leadership, and understands more clearly than any other the cares and concerns of the members of the flock?
Let us stop and consider for a moment the condition our ecclesias would be in without the support of our elder women. In the words of Judges, “village life would cease,” wouldn’t it? When you walk into the hall do you feel warmth and love? I do, and no small amount because of my adoptive mothers in the San Diego ecclesia who never fail to give me much needed hugs on Sunday mornings. Our faith isn’t a cold one and our brotherhood is not an unfeeling one. Our sisters supply the beautiful and necessary balance.
Proverbs
Proverbs help us to understand that balance. The book begins with exhortations about wisdom prefaced with this in Prov. 1:8-9:
Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.
The commandment is dual; listen to our father’s instruction and our mother’s teaching. What does our mother teach us? Our mothers teach us to love and care for one another with tenderness. This is not necessarily a job only for women, but it is often the woman drawing on her motherly experience that takes the lead in this service. It is interesting that Jesus draws on the hen as an example of his feelings for Jerusalem (Matt. 23:37).
0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.
In this passage, Christ draws from a mother in the animal kingdom to assert the strength of his feeling. Maternal instincts toward a child may be the strongest of any God-given instinct. It is that instinct which a mother brings to her children in the desire to raise them in the truth, and it is this natural affection an elder sister brings to an ecclesia where she has seen many children raised from infancy who grow into brothers and sisters in the meeting.
Paul’s allusions
Paul more directly draws on the affections of a mother when describing how he feels toward the ecclesia in Thessalonica (I Thess. 2:6-8):
As apostles of Christ, we could have been a burden to you, but we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.
Paul’s use of a mother’s love makes his point very poignant. Each of us can newly appreciate the depth of his words. Paul is an extraordinary man, as we all agree. As an extraordinary man he can draw on nothing more powerful to describe his love than a mother. Mothers in the ecclesia often feel this way toward the ecclesia’s members. They know nothing different, having learned the affection naturally.
Ruth and Naomi
This commitment and love which is fostered by our sisters finds great expression in the words of Ruth toward Naomi in Ruth 1:16-18:
But Ruth replied, ‘Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.’
Is it surprising to any of us that this passage, used in numerous weddings and special occasions, is spoken between two women? Not only is it spoken between two women, but from a daughter-in-law to her mother-in-law. There is urgency and a feeling in these words that invite us to understand the depth of devotion Ruth felt toward Naomi. This is the gift of our sisters, and this is among the many qualities they teach us as mothers.
Proverbs 31
To point just briefly to the work of mothers and sisters, we can look to the helpful words of Proverbs in chapter 31. The husband sits at the gate in a position of honor while his wife:
- Selects wool and flax and works with eager hands.
- Provides food for her family.
- Considers a field and buys it.
- Sets about her work vigorously. She sees that her trading is profitable, and her lamp does not go out at night.
- Opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy.
- When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
- Makes coverings for her bed; she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
- Speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
- Watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.
- Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her.
Our mothers work very hard to provide for their families’ physical and emotional needs. Notice, please, that the children at the end of this passage arise and call their mother blessed. When did we last do that? When did we arise and bless our mothers because of their unceasing love for us? When is the last time we just told our mothers thank you and simply told them that they were appreciated, cared for, and respected?
Mothers foster affection for God
My mother had everything to do with the affection I have for the truth today. I can recall the countless times I felt weak in the truth or else was distracted with the world. My mother is the one in tune with my emotions and able to steer me back to Christ. My mother was my Sunday school teacher; she made coming to meeting fun and enjoyable as a child.
Mothers with knowledge of the truth can raise great men and women of faith, being the chief spiritual influence in their children’s youth. Paul gives Timothy’s mother Eunice and grandmother Lois credit for Timothy’s faith (II Tim. 1:5).
I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.
One small story before we end. At the moment of writing this article my mother, having recently gone through surgery, is unable to serve in ways she always has. This is a source of frustration to her. Recently it was my father’s birthday and she was unable to celebrate. I asked my dad if he ended up getting a birthday meal. He responded by saying yes. A sister in his ecclesia had made some chicken and potatoes and brought them to meeting for him to take home.
Young people, our sisters understand how to care. Learning to honor our mothers will help us learn to honor the sisters in our ecclesias. It will teach us even handedness in understanding ecciesial responsibility and appreciating all the work that is done. As well, young men, consider very strongly before marriage the kind of mother your bride will become. You aren’t just marrying a woman; you are marrying the mother of your children. Next to you, she will be your children’s strongest spiritual influence.
Here are some practical ways to honor especially our mothers that we can start to put into practice right away:
- Let your mother know she is appreciated: Proverbs 23:22 commands that we despise not our mother when she is older. Why should this be a concern? If we don’t learn to appreciate our mothers when they are active, how can we cherish them as they grow older? Our mothers do a lot that may go unnoticed, so start noticing and remind them that you appreciate their love. Simply say thank you.
- Share how you feel: By the time women get to motherhood they have generally gone through quite a bit and have dealt with a lot of emotional issues. My mother wants no more than to be able to share her wisdom with me, but I first have to invite her in by sharing with her my problems. Once I do, she will guide me back to God, and I almost always feel reassured. This can only happen we if we share our lives with our mothers. Doing this will honor them.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One