Motherhood: God’s Heart

The celebration of Mother’s Day has been exported across the world from America and each year, supermarkets and retailers are full of beautiful promotions for this day; flowers, cards with spring colours, chocolates and jewellery.

Beyond the fun and meaningful opportunity to thank our mothers, lies the deep and vital understanding that the giving and nurture of life, in it’s most vital element, comes from mothers.

This is God ordained and to understand the fullness of this role, we must look to Him who often describes Himself as a mother to His people, in emotions and actions.

Isaiah 66:13 God as a comforting mother

“As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.”

Within this Word, we see the depth of comfort, solace, compassion, and mercy in God’s heart for us and He parallels that with a mother’s heart. This is something He repeats as a reoccurring theme in this poetic book of the Old Testament, likening Himself to a mother in labour, and a nursing mother (Isaiah 42:14 and Isaiah 49:15). In this, God demonstrates that He experiences the great joys and great pains of this majestic bond and so we come to see, that this incredible role of nurture and dedication is indeed a reflection of God. The heart of a mother mirrors the heart of the God in whose image mothers are made.

This is profound because we need to know and accept this depth of love from God. It can seem to good to be true, that not only is God as passionate about us as a father in His dedication, sacrifice and protection, but also as tender, patient and vulnerable as a mother. The truth is that God delights in us, that He is a complete parent because His love is complete. This is why David rejoices: “When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me in”. (Psalm 27:10-14). To recognise this is to comprehend the height, depth and width of God’s perfect love (Ephesians 3:18), and to thereby receive comfort and assurance that God is love (1 John 4:8).

God is perfect and as Jesus affirms, is our Father (John 20:27), and our God. As God, the Lord can only be a perfect and complete parent for there is no lack in God. What a lovely day to reflect on God’s unending and faithful love!

As we love and honour our earthly mothers as God commands, we should also look to God who fashioned their role, in light of His own commitment and love for us. Mother’s Day is opportunity to receive from God, a full parental love and acceptance through His son Yeshua. Let us reflect on what it is receive a perfect parental love beyond that which an earthly parent can give us: truly unconditional, consistently patient and dedicated without fail.