Honor thy mother

In 2007, Mother's Day showed up on the thirteenth day in May, with countless dollars spent on various forms of physical affection, spiritual support, and material evidence of adoration. The fact is that each person with a mother, regardless of the quality of that mother, owe a great deal of debt to that person. The fact that a person has a functional moral system often stems from one's mother.

Add to this the qualities of a good mother - the kind of mother who actually cares about her children. This is something many take for granted, which in-and-of-itself says something wonderful and terrible about the culture those children come from - that a culture would train women to be such amazing women that we can take for granted that a woman will be a wonderful mother.

Certainly this gives a great deal of credit to women without actually specifying it. And given the sheer amount of marketing that goes into guiltily reminding over-busy people to thank their mothers, it seems to be a cultural thing to disassociate with one's mother until mother's day, when all of a sudden you are to quickly communicate how much she meant to you, then spend the next few months ignoring her until thanksgiving.

But I am not here to speak about good mothers. I honor mothers, and I greatly honor good mothers, but there is another category that gets far too little face time but does a great deal more to enhance the quality of life of literally everyone on the planet. This category is the Godly mother, including the mothers who put God before their families, who go to bed crying some nights, praying for their beloved husbands and children, for their neighbors, and often forget themselves, and the mothers who so gently and firmly live out the Proverbs 31 lifestyle (at least its current incarnation) that the men who grow up under the spiritual authority that results have a very hard time valuing and appreciating women who don't follow in the same footsteps - thus improving the likelihood that they too will choose edifying companions, thus enhancing the chain and keeping Christianity a thriving reality.

Mothers who put God first, before themselves, before their children, and before their husbands, are doing the highest service they possibly can, honoring their station, and perhaps doing the world's hardest job in what seems the most difficult way possible - on the surface. In the long run, it’s the only way to do the job well with any kind of assurance that you've done the job well.

The result of such an effort and focus are astounding. You have seen children who are functional members of society, clearly loving God, being helpful to others, and having a certain peace about them. There is a very large chance that they had a spiritual mother. Sometimes it was even their birth mother, but Godly mothers don't always have to be the one we're born with.

On this topic, there will always be an insufficient time to write, speak, or communicate - the literal effect that mothers have had in our lives is incalculable, and that is how it should be. Our job isn't to keep the ledger of appreciation. It’s to return the favor by honoring the God of our mothers. And to earnestly let her know, in whatever fashion she most appreciates, that you truly value her counsel and her mothering.

Call to action

• Pray for your mother
  
  Not many people would voluntarily sign up for the job that mother's are called to do. Regardless how supportive or amazing she was or still is, she deserves your prayers. It is one way you can honor God - it's built into His ten commandments.
  
  How valuable must your mother be if God took the ten rules of edifying living and said, briefly "Okay, in addition to worshipping me, I want you to honor your parents". Your mom must matter a great deal to God if she was put on THAT list. Also, as a side note, notice that mother was put before father. Mothers are a big deal to God.


• Pray for the mothers of others
  
  One of the sad realities of the human condition is that not everyone has a mother. And even worse, fewer still have Godly mothers. Consider those women of antiquity who sacrificed their children to various gods, or the mothers in the bible who ate their children, or even the mothers in the news who leave their children in dumpsters - not something we often discuss, especially on Mother's Day.
  
  Whether we might focus our mindset on the mother who is trying her best to do what is right (but is a new mother, never had any real experience raising little ones or little siblings, and has no support network), to the mothers in countries of oppression where they are taught that only certain genders 'count' to countries where women are second-class citizens, many, many would-be mothers, actual apathetic mothers, and mothers who gave their children up for adoption need our prayers.
  
  Add to this the very real list of women who are struggling, even while you read these words, to be the very best mothers they can be but don't know how - they deserve your prayers too.


• Love your mother
  
  There are five standards ways to show someone genuine appreciation and love. They are: quality time, physical touch, words of affirmation, gifts, and acts of service. Determine which your mom most values and provide that to her today in as simple and effective a manner as you can. She will appreciate it more than she'll be able to convey and you'll know that she will likely know that her own efforts were a worthy investment.


• Honor your mother
  
  In prayer to God, ask Him to bring to mind something you've been told by your mom that you may have set aside or intended to do but forgotten. If there is nothing - congratulations! You're part of the .01% of the people I've met that truly are amazing - witness to us!
  
  Everyone else: give that event, idea, or opportunity to God and ask Him to show you how whether it is in His will. Ask him something along the lines that, if it IS his will, to incorporate it into your life. Regardless, actively honor your mom, being mindful this day of the reality of your existence in this world, how you think, your relationship with God, and your relationship with women, are all reflections of your own relationship with your mom.

Jesus the butler

1. At the end of Luke 10, we find Martha, "cumbered about much serving" and thus is "knocking at the door", asking Jesus for aid. Jesus does not answer as Martha was clearly expecting - instead Jesus replies that Mary, who Martha was asking for help from, was about some other business.


2. In the middle of John 14 (v 13-14), we find Jesus stating that whatsoever we ask, in the name of Jesus, we can expect God to act on


3. At the beginning of the revelation of John (2:4), we have Jesus speaking about how the church of Ephesus forgot their first love.

One of the things I have been struggling with in my walk is that simple truth revealed in John 14, how we can expect, if we but claim in the name of Jesus Christ, we should to realize ANYTHING we claim. I have read about it, prayed about it, and I felt fully this was true. Yet, on those occasions where I have acted on this fact, I have not always realized the prayer. You could argue that the lack of arrival is a lack of faith - there is a phrase that describes this "Faith that Fizzles at the Finish had a Flaw in it From the First". Which is all well and good, but what about the practical application? How can we, as believers, put into practice the very real and literal applications resident in scripture?

Or to put it another way, could someone, who truly loves Jesus, but was angry at a country, pray for that country to be so decimated that no living being could live there, and expect that prayer to come to pass? Could they truly pray, in the name of Jesus, for "Invisible radioactive glow-worms to eat every man, woman, and child, from the intestines, outward, so that everyone in that country could be given a quicker glimpse of heaven and we wouldn't have to deal with their presence on earth"?

I don't think so.

So what tools does that leave a believer if they are truly, and literally, claiming God's words as practicable?

Let us look to scripture for what I believe is the answer, specifically Luke 10. Here we have Martha, clearly someone who believed in Jesus as having authority, and respecting that authority, implored Him for some help. And Jesus didn't grant it. Instead, he cautioned Martha that Mary was doing something more important than helping Martha. It is implying, to my mind, that there was a need Martha should have been more aware of - and that Jesus was taking care of the real need instead of the one Martha thought was the important one.

So my call to action today is simple:

• What needs SHOULD you be focusing on? Discovering what Jesus thinks you should be focusing on, and praying for the resolution of those dilemmas, will likely bear a great more fruit than praying for whatever needs pop into your head.


• And everything else you think is a need? Pray that Jesus will take care of them, will provide the necessary resources to resolve them, and then give them so completely to God that you aren't worrisome about them.

The Precocious Savior

So we have, in Luke 2, Jesus being observed as a bit precocious (in particular, when he tells his parents he had not traveled with them because he was 'about his father's business' ... imagine your 12 year old son telling you that he had stayed at the store because 'he was about his father's business') - I believe that Jesus was a genius. In addition to the fact that He was the physical embodiment of God, He was also probably as close to the goal of human perfection as we'll ever get - the closest of which is Adam. And I believe Adam was probably one of the brightest men that ever lived. Now, we don't get any direct evidence of this, and certainly the concept of intelligence quotient was likely unknown in the Garden of Eden. But three events suggest he was a thinking, reasoning person, one of which implies a certain degree of creativity.

- As a side note to this is the fact that God didn't make Adam in the Garden of Eden! For some reason, possibly Sunday School or someone's opinion, I have always assumed that Adam's first home was Eden, specifically the Garden (and, by the way, in our tongue, if we say the Garden of XXXXX, we usually mean that Eden was a place, or a city - and the first city was created by Adam's first born, much later ... so what was Eden?), which you can find in Genesis 2:8 and Genesis 2:15. -

The first event [Genesis 2:15]was God's assignment for Adam while Adam was in the garden, "... to dress and keep the garden." I always assumed that to 'keep' a garden referred to the idea of maintaining it. And, because later in Genesis, the ground was cursed for Adam's sake, the suggests it wasn't cursed before he sinned - that, in fact, the action of gardening was in-and-of-itself fulfilling without being overly hard work, something that anyone, of any age, could reasonably do. So that is the second verb, but what of the first? I have always imagined the verb 'dress' to have a kinship with the item of clothing - the idea being that to dress something is to make it presentable and attractive. Hence, Adam's job was to fold: to make the garden look nice and to maintain that garden.

Allow me to rudely interrupt myself by stating - there is a rare task that isn't improved by a mind. Granted, after a certain point, the capacity for intelligent thought and personal creativity, can impede your function and be a useful servant - but, as long as one remains focused one's task, having that creativity and capcity for thought can only enhance one's efforts. And so it was with Adam. Given Adam was God's first attempt at humanity, it was likely perfect. Everyone after Eve, being our own copies of Adam and Eve, will likely be less perfect, both because we don't really know what we're doing, but also because we don't have the tools God has. And so I believe Adam had the best of all our attributes. Probably amazing endurance, astonishing wit, and abundant capacity ... and likely, all the most intense of our appetites.

So, I believe that the very best garden was maintained by the world's most amazing gardener - Adam! Adam was probably designed to live and work in the Garden of Eden. He was probably insightful, intuitive, had a feel for the ground, and had any other automatic feel for how things worked ... and clearly, he could ask God anything that he had a question about - for God walked in the Garden while Adam was there! So, I leave this point with the observation that Adam was likely a reasoning, thinking human, with a his own share of creativity.

The second event [Gen 2:19-20] is with Adam's second job - to name every living creature. I imagine that this second task was to be temporary, and had other motives, but it likely took a while. Imagine how much love God felt for Adam at this point, something akin to "The man, that we have formed from the red clay, will name our animals, and Adam shall know the love we feel for him in the naming of the animals!" And Adam was at it quite a while, for he gave names to all cattle, to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field [Gen 2:20]. The ability to come up with distinct labels for animals is a gift that isn't revealed to be distinct, or supplementary, to Adam's design; instead, it was clearly something Adam was made to do as well. So we have someone who, in his first profession (and we don't know how long he was in that profession), was clearly made to do multiple things. And, distinct even from the first event, it is clear that Adam's creativity was amazing. How well would you, or I, been able to name even a few hundred animals. Adam named them all! So this second event indicates to me that Adam was a brilliant man. And, given how language works, the fact that the animals were likely named after body parts, or functions, or their appearance, suggests also that Adam had a facility for reasoning as well.

The third [Gen 3:6] is his reaction to Eve's decision to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. It, to me, plainly reveals that he was consciously reacting to what Eve was choosing to do. Certainly, it does not state it specifically - it says merely "...and gave also unto her husband WITH her; and she did eat." It clearly indicates that Adam was near enough, likely to watch what she was doing, and didn't react. And so we have this third aspect to Adam's character. Above he is revealed to be inventive, creative, and a reasoning being. This third event reveals him to be a thinker as well - for it is clear that Adam saw Eve act and did not. Of course, the "why" can only be revealed by the Holy Spirit - but the fact is that Adam has been a doer his whole life, up to this point. As far as we can surmise, everything available to him seemed to be something he had a hand in. It would have been easy for him to assume, because he appeared to be the only thinking being on the planet, and because God had given him charge to name everything, that Adam felt a kind of kinship, but also a kind of ownership, over these things. Certainly it would have been a natural expression of the "keep" task he had already been charged ... likely years before he was given the task of protecting Eve.

Regardless, we can at the very least conclude that, based only on Genesis 2, Adam was no mental slouch. And Jesus was made from Adam's seed, but had no sin. Imagine how amazing Jesus would have been in comparison to his family and peers.

And so, it would be so easy to respect Jesus' genius as being evidence of God's love for us ... for it would have taken an anointed genius to be who Jesus was for us .. it took Jesus to be the Jesus we needed ... someone who would sin not and be the intentional sacrifice for us all. But, instead of resting on His intellectual laurels, he required himself to only communicate using scripture, implying that any of us could do the same. What an amazing testimony!

God is so good!