Faith

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There are plenty of examples around us of mothers – some good, some not so good. I’ve never seen a perfect Mum, but we all have a pretty good idea of what we would expect from a mother.

To generalise, we expect mothers to have the following qualities: nurturing, encouraging, comforting, protecting, a good listener, not too quick to judge, forgiving and overflowing with unconditional love. Whereas Fathers, in general, are expected to be the physical protector, the authoritative one and the one to discipline children.

As I’ve said, this is a generalisation, because in some cases these roles are reversed, and of course in our society today the single parent has to learn to be both mother and father to their child.

No earthly parent is perfect but God is our perfect parent. He is known as God the Father, we read about him in the bible and Jesus refers to him as his father. He is our perfect parent, and I say that as he has both fatherly and motherly qualities, which are over and above any that our natural parents show. As we draw near to Mother’s Day (in the United Kingdom) I do want to focus on the motherly qualities of God. Sometimes we, myself included, try to put God in a box, and if we see him as just an authoritarian Father figure, we actually limit all that he really is. There is so much more to God that we can, without realising, miss out on. Today I really want to open our eyes a little bit more to who he is and the sort of relationship we can know with him.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating that we refer to God as “she” or our “mother” that is totally wrong and unbiblical. God is in fact genderless, neither male nor female, but he does encompass the best qualities of both male and female, and I don’t want us to ignore an important part of his nature.

If we consider for a moment our own experiences of our parents we often see how far short our mothers and fathers were from what they should be, they had weaknesses, they failed at times and for some of us it may even be painful to look back at their parents. But we cannot allow our own experiences with our earthly parents to shape how we see God as our heavenly parent. We need to understand that God includes the best qualities of motherhood and fatherhood – he doesn’t make mistakes or get it wrong, he never fails us – he is our perfect parent.

Let me share a story with you, I’ve adapted it a little but you may be familiar with one or other version of it. As I share it, think about how the mother’s love in the story illustrates God’s love for us.

A young boy thought his mum owed him for being good and doing jobs around the home. So he wrote a list and how much he thought he should be paid. He passed it to his mum, and this is what she read:
For making my bed every morning 70p
For cleaning my bedroom £1
For going to the shops £1
For doing my homework 50p
For going to bed without moaning 70p
For setting the table at mealtimes 70p
For entertaining my little sister 50p
For putting the rubbish out 40p
For cleaning the rabbit hutch 50p Total owed: £6

His mother read the list but didn’t say a word; she sat down at the table, turned over the paper and wrote:

For loving you the moment I held you in my arms, no charge
For the times I’ve stayed up with you at night when you’ve been poorly, no charge
For the times I’ve provided you with food and nourishment, no charge
For encouraging you to always do your best, no charge
For wiping away your tears and hugging you after you had fallen and scraped your knee, no charge
For listening to you and comforting you when you had fallen out with your best friend, no charge
For the times I’ve washed and ironed your clothes, no charge
For the times I’ve heard you read, and helped you learn your spelling and times tables, no charge
For the times I’ve taken you on holiday and out for treats, no charge

Can you see how this mother’s love is a picture of God’s love for us?

This mother lavished love on her child, loving him night and day, through happy and sad times, giving him what he needed and expecting nothing in return. Likewise, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” I John 3:1.

Let’s consider the word “Lavish”. Isn’t that a great word? For me it conjures up all kinds of positive thoughts and imaginings. The dictionary says it means to give or produce something in large quantities, plentiful. Well, that’s good but read what words the thesaurus uses for the word lavish and you’ll get a wonderful picture of what lavish is really all about. When you look up lavish in the thesaurus these are the words you will see: abundant, bountiful, generous, magnificent, extravagant. Can you see how all those words actually describe our loving God?

God’s love for us is unconditional. God loves us as much today as he did yesterday and as much as he will tomorrow. It doesn’t depend on our behaviour, what we have done or haven’t done. His love is so different to the world’s love which is often conditional and performance based. Nothing we can do will make him love us more and nothing we can do can make him love us less. He loves us no matter what. When I send my children off school in the morning I tell them I love them and to have a good day. God is the same, each day he tells that he loves us and wants the best for us. And his love goes even further than a parent’s love. Whereas I can’t be there for my children every moment of every day, God is with us all the time. At the end of the day when I settle my children for the night I tell them again that I love them. God is the same. Sometimes we can mistakenly think as we look over our day, that God will love us so much because of what we have done. At other times when we have got it wrong and sinned we think God can’t possibly love us today. That’s wrong thinking, when we’ve had what we consider a good day God says I love you my child. When we’ve had what we consider has been a bad day, when we’ve messed up and feel like we’ve let God down, he says I love you my child.

God’s love is a free gift to us, just like the mother’s love in my story. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him will not die but have eternal life. John 3:16. Read it a second time and replace the word “world” with your own name to make it personal to you. He loves you so much that he gave Jesus for you. He has freely given what cost him most dearly to give, his own dear son, Jesus. There is no need to give anything else as anything else is less than his best for us. We think if we live good lives God owes us more, but no, what more could he give than his own son? We don’t deserve anything from God; he chooses to freely give himself. God freely gives this gift but we do need to respond to it – either we say we don’t need or want it, or we gladly accept it. When we accept then we become his child. I become his beloved daughter; you become his beloved daughter or son too.

God adopts us into his family. He loves us totally, and it’s an everlasting love. There’s a verse in the gospel of John where we read that he loves us even as he loves Jesus, his own son. Just stop and think about that – how incredible is that, God doesn’t have favourites! He loves you no more, and no less than the person sitting next to you.

Allan Meyer (an Australian writer and speaker, co-author of the Lifekeys Courses) – says that nobody chooses their own parents. Our looks and character is a combination of the genes inherited from our earthly parents. Sometimes we want to blame the way things are on our natural parents. It’s their problem I have a short temper etc. It can feel like there’s no hope of being any different because of what we’ve inherited from them. However, when we are adopted into God’s family he gives us a new life and something miraculous happens when we become his child – we now have God’s divine spiritual and moral nature. Just as in the physical realm it takes time for the genes with inherited from our parents to unpack, so too do the spiritual genes we’ve inherited from God, our parent. We have the power implanted in us to be all that God’s called us to be – exciting! Our personality isn’t changed (after all God’s made us as we are) but our character changes to become more like him. I wonder if people look at me and say “I know whose daughter you are”?! Becoming God’s child means we are given a fresh new start – there are endless possibilities before us and we are not held back by who we used to be or what people expected of us. There is hope!

As a mother comforts so too does God. One of the names for God in the Old Testament is El Shaddai, which, when translated actually means, God the breasted one, the one who nurtures us and provides for our needs. Look how God refers to himself in Isaiah 66:12-13 (Amplified Bible) “For thus says the Lord: Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream; then you will be nursed, you will be carried on her hip and trotted [lovingly bounced up and down] on her [God's maternal] knees. As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.” And earlier in Isaiah, God says "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!” Is our response to God like David’s as he writes in Psalm 131:2-3 (NIV) “But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore.” We can approach God as David did, we can be calmed and quieted by God in times when we are worried and upset just like a baby at her mother’s breast. When a mother feeds her young baby it’s a real bonding time, mother’s whole attention is taken up with her child, she focuses on him/her and the baby is secure in her mother’s arms, safe, warm and protected. This is a wonderful picture of how God is with us, his attention is focused on us, we are safe, secure and protected in his arms.

We are told that God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. I have a picture in my mind of God tenderly bending down to wipe away our tears. When my son was very young and sick at night, I would see to his needs and comfort him. This wasn’t always easy when I was feeling tired and needing my sleep! Sometimes he would have to call for me a few times before I was aware that he needed me. But God never sleeps, he hears us straight away when we call to him. Mothers can very easily wipe away a child’s tears and their hurts, and the child is soon comforted. We face different kinds of hurts and encounter painful experiences, but God is more than able to wipe away our tears and ease our pain. He is comfortable with our emotions and the bible says he is close to the broken hearted. We’re good at hiding our emotions from people, putting on a mask as we feel we can’t really say how we’re feeling but we can be totally honest with God.

As a mother picks up her child when they fall, so too God picks us up in his arms, in Psalm 40:2 (New Living Translation) we read “He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along.” And in other verses in Psalms it talks about God upholding us with his hand. I remember when both my children were learning to walk. Sometimes they would fall down and need encouragement to pick themselves up and start again. There are times when we struggle with life in general and at those times God is available and at hand to pick us up and hold us up through our difficulties. At other times when we falter in our Christian walk God is at hand to forgive us and lift us up and get us walking in his ways again.

A mother provides food and drink for her child. When my daughter was young, she didn’t find communication easy, but she was always able to communicate to me her need for food and she was confident that if she was hungry, she could come to me, make her need known and I would satisfy/meet her need. Just like a mother, God provides us with nourishment, he says to us, "Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.” (Isaiah 55:1 NIV) Just as a mother provides the right food for her child to physically grow, if we come to God he provides us with our spiritual nourishment that we may grow and mature.

In other passages God is depicted as a mother eagle or some other bird. In Psalm 36:7 (Amplified Bible) we read “How precious is Your steadfast love, O God! The children of men take refuge and put their trust under the shadow of Your wings.” This is similar to what Jesus says of himself in Matthew “how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,” It’s a beautiful picture of God’s love for us and how in him we have security, safety and protection. Nothing can harm us when we are protected by God “under the shadow of his wings”.

God encourages us. In Deuteronomy, God is depicted as a mother eagle who stirs up her young to leave the nest and learn to fly, in the message version we read how God he cares for his people “He threw his arms around him, lavished attention on him, guarding him as the apple of his eye. He was like an eagle hovering over its nest, overshadowing its young, then spreading its wings, lifting them into the air, teaching them to fly.” God encourages us to spread our wings, to move us out of what is comfortable and try knew things, to serve him and fulfil our potential rather than staying living a limited life within our “nest”. And he is also there to catch us if we are trying to move too quickly or when we attempt things we’re not ready for. He then encourages us to try again.

Maybe you’ve never known the love of a mother, maybe you’ve felt let down or ignored by your mother, but God always shows us tender love of a mother and we can experience from him what we have never known from our human parents, Psalm 27:9-11 (Amplified Bible) says “Hide not Your face from me; turn not Your servant away in anger, You Who have been my help! Cast me not off, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation! Although my father and my mother have forsaken me, yet the Lord will take me up [adopt me as His child].” Our earthly parents may not have been all that we wanted them to be, but God is ready to be my parent, your parent and lavish on us a love so much greater and better than any person can give us. We find all the love we need in the arms of our heavenly parent.

There may be someone reading this article who, for the first time, has realised that God wants to be your parent, and you may long to know him personally in that way. The good news is that you can come to him today and ask to become his child and I can promise you he won’t turn you away.

Others reading this may know God as Lord, or friend, but never considered him in the nature of your parent. You too, from today, can develop your relationship with God as his child and ask him to reveal himself to you as a loving parent.

If you already experience a love relationship with God in this way then maybe he is asking you to demonstrate that kind of parent love to your own child, or be a spiritual parent to someone else, a young person in your church, or someone young in their faith.

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