A Tribute to Mothers

Good morning to y'all. It's a—it's a pleasure to be here again after being away for a week, or maybe it was two weeks. I can't remember when the last time was. It was for service, so it's nice to be here again. As you can see, our subject today is about Mother's Day, and I'm not really going to even call it a message. It's a few scattered thoughts, a few verses, and a few quotes. And then I'm hoping at the end of the message to open it up for anyone who has a—a memory about their mother, something positive—positive, hopefully, that they can share.

And, um, so I hope to leave you plenty of time. This shouldn't take long today. As we all know, today has been chosen as the day to celebrate our mothers or to honor our mothers. And I'm going to be the first to admit I feel like we need to make sure we do that all year long, not just on this day. And I also think we should honor our parents. It's not just Mother's Day is a good thing, and I think it's good that we have a day where we stop and think about that just a little bit, what our mothers mean to us. But also to honor our parents as a—as a unit is really important.

So I—I don't want to put that aside.

I often find myself thinking about it as I think about when I watch a person that's really influential, a good speaker, somebody who has a lot of sway in society or even in a church. I often look at them, and one of the first things that goes through my mind is, "I wonder how he treats his wife."

I don't know if any of you guys ever had that or not, but that's something that goes through my mind, that to me, that characterizes a person is how he treats his wife. And then along with that, how does he treat his mother?

Um, I think it's important. We all know the old saying, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." I know I've used that saying here before, but it's really important because that the mother, what she does in training her children and raising a baby from little on up, has more influence on the world than all the politicians out there that have their different messages that they're hollering at the world. This has more influence than any of that.

Must excuse my picture here. Does anyone recognize this lady?

Anybody know who it is?

The point is, is that I don't think anybody does. And I'm sure when that picture was done, everybody in that area at least knew who that person was, probably. But I don't have a clue who she is either.

That's part of the point there. I just used it as a little bit of an illustration. But a woman, what I call a woman of the world, an actress, an empress, a—a woman that has a career, has a great influence in the world of careers and everything like that, may leave a certain kind of mark on our society, on our world. But they seldom, if ever, inspire others to become noble, to be true, or to be—and most of all, godly or kind. Those kind of women of the world hardly ever leave a mark. And I use this picture just as kind of a face to that because you can see this is a real—this lady is really in fashion in her time.

A mother wins the hearts and affections of her children from babyhood. And many times she can speak into the life of a wayford son or daughter in ways where none other is able. And I'm a—I'm an example, a living example of that. My mother had a lot of influence on me, or I'd probably not be here today.

I'll give that honor to my father with that as well. But our mothers are really important to us.

Does anyone know what that is?

That's the Trojan horse. It's—it's a—it's a model of it. I don't know if they even know what it looked like or if anything, but that's the best picture I could find of something like that. I think of our mothers as a type of Trojan horse.

Um, they quietly—they quietly come into our society, and they invade the influence that they have invades our world. They bring—they bring children into the world, and they have all this capability and possibility of changing the world from the inside out, just like the Trojan horse when they came to the city of Troy. And I don't remember the name of the generals or anything else. I just remember that part of it. So please forgive me if I get anything wrong in the history.

But they put the soldiers—some soldiers inside this wooden horse or whatever it was, and they gave this horse to that city of Troy as a gift or whatever it was. And they—and apparently the people were dumb enough to take it inside. And they took it inside. And then at night, these soldiers that were hidden inside that horse got out and invaded the city.

Well, our mothers may not take the world by—by explosion or by a great—a great big movement that everybody sees, but it's a quiet entrance. It's a quiet invasion, just like the Trojan horse. It's just something that came into my mind.

I would like to read a few verses that show how important mothers are in God's order of life and why we ought to honor our mothers. And you will also see that many of these verses do include the fathers. So don't overlook that. That's really important.

Wisdom of Sirach, chapter 4, verses 4 through 6. And this is out of the Septuagint. So some of you may not recognize these verses. Um, and this is out of the Brenton version of the Septuagint. So it's a little bit archaic in its language. It might remind you of the old King James Bible. "And he that honors his mother is as one that layeth up treasure. Whoso honors his father shall have joy of his own children. And when he maketh his prayer, he shall be heard.

He that honors his father shall have a long life. And he that is obedient unto the Lord shall be a comfort to his mother."

Proverbs 1:8, "My son, hear the instruction of thy father and forsake not the law of thy mother." The next verse is very similar. "My son, keep thy father's commandment and forsake not the law of thy mother."

Proverbs 23:25, "Let thy father and thy mother rejoice over thee, and let her that bore thee be glad. Give your mother a reason to be proud, to be happy that she had you as a child."

Another passage from—from the Septuagint and the book of Tobit, chapter 4, verse 3 and 4. And just a little history on this. I—I—I should have read up again on Tobit. I've read through the book a number of times. But one of the main things that stands out to me about Tobit is the fact that he was so concerned for his own people in the Gentile city where he was living. I can't even remember the name of the city off the top of my head here. But he was so concerned about his people. His heart went out to his people. And it really bothered him that so many of his people were killed and murdered and nobody was allowed to go and bury them, or they were afraid to go and bury these people because they were afraid that the—the evil people would actually kill them as well for doing so.

So he would sneak out at night and go bury these dead brothers of his, these people from his own people. He'd go and bury, give them a proper burial. So just keep that in your mind as we're reading this. And this is his—what he's saying to his son, um, Tobias, I think was his name. "And when he had called him, he said, 'My son, when I am dead, bury me and despise not thy mother, but honor her all the days of thy life and do that which shall please her and grieve her not.

Remember, my son, that she saw many dangers for thee. When thou wast in her womb and when she is dead, bury her by me in one grave.'" Just see him honoring his wife, and he wants his son to honor his mother.

I would like to read a few more verses that bear witness to the influence a godly mother has on her son. And I think we're all familiar with this. This is Paul talking to Timothy. I think we're all familiar with the situation. But Timothy is always kind of represented as a young man. I don't know how old he was. I picture a young man of maybe 24 or 25, but I have no clue of his age. Maybe David, if you were here, could give us an idea on that. But Timothy was a young man. He was also a church leader.

And Paul even said in one place, he said, "Don't let anyone despise your youth." So apparently having a man of his age as a church leader wasn't all that common. He wanted people to—he wanted Timothy to do his work with confidence. And I'm going to say this is one of the reasons why that Timothy was in the place he was today. As we read these verses, just think about this. "I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of of thee in my prayers night and day.

Greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy when I recall to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in my—in thy grandmother Loas and in thy mother Eunice."

And for some reason, this thing is slid down. It was changed to programs. It went and left some of it off here. So see if I can find it here.

And I'm persuaded that is in thee also. That's the phrase that's missing.

So we see that Timothy was not born in, you could say, of a vacuum. He didn't just come out of nowhere all of a sudden and become a Christian and have this great Christian experience and became a great Christian leader. He came from a line of mothers and grandmothers that were godly people, and they had a great effect on him.

So how did Jesus feel about his mother? In all his mission to serve the Father, did Jesus dishonor his mother? We know that the Catholic Church has made a lot of the Mother of God, as they call it, or Mary, and they—and they idolize her. But what did Jesus actually—how did Jesus feel about his earthly mother, the one who gave him life, human life, you could say? I have a few verses here that I'd like to read, and these really bless me.

John 19, verse 25 through 27. "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother and his mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw his mother and the disciples standing by whom he loved, he saith unto her, unto his mother, 'Woman, behold thy son.'" And I believe this is talking about the Apostle John. He's saying to her, "Look at your son. He's your son now." "Then he saith he to the disciple, 'Behold thy mother.' And from that hour, that disciple took her unto his own home." So Jesus, even in his death, the awful death that he was experiencing on the cross, looked down, looked at his mother, looked at his disciple there, and he said, "I want to make sure my mother's taken care of before I leave this world."

And he—he commended her to his son, to his disciple John there. I just thought that was really precious.

We know that the Old Testament, in the Old Testament, God wanted children to honor their parents. We read that about that in—in the—in Proverbs especially. And you see that in different places. But what about in the New Testament era or in the Enlightened Age where children are supposedly smarter than their parents?

We hear that sometimes that children are so much smarter than their parents. They have more information thrown at them than their parents did, probably. That's the difference. But it doesn't mean that they're smarter. So I just like us to look at, see whether God's heart has changed on this at all or not.

Ephesians 6, verse 1 through 3, it's one we're all familiar with. "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long in the earth." So God's mind has not changed on it. He wants children to honor their parents. He wants children to honor their mothers and fathers.

And he says the promise is that you're more apt to have a longer life if you obey your parents. I was just last night talking to my children about that. I said, "Why is it that you should have a longer life if you obey your parents?" That's because our parents are working hard to protect us from all sorts of dangers. And if we—just that simple fact, if we obey them and stay away from things that we—that parents say that we should stay away from, it'll make a big difference. So that's just a practical detail. There's another thing. If we obey our parents, it automatically puts us in favor with God the Father. God looks on that with favor.

So you have him on your side. But if we're dishonoring our parents, if we're dishonoring, disobeying our parents, we can't guarantee that we're under God's protection either.

I would like to read a few quotes from secular sources that I feel help honor our mothers. Because even though the world tries to destroy godly motherhood in many ways, in the background, there is still that slight effort made to honor mothers. And some of these are a little bit humorous, and some of them are just—are just—they're interesting. I hope you all can enjoy them. "The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother."

And I think that is true. I think if we want our children to honor their mothers, the fathers, us as fathers, or husbands need to be doing that too.

If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?

If any of you—you mothers understand this probably even better than a lot of men do, but I've seen mothers the kind of things that they have to do to be a good mother, and I agree with him on that. I thought about it. I could add something else to that. Why don't they have eyes the whole way around their head too?

"A child's first teacher is its mother." And that is—that is very true.

Life doesn't come with a manual. It comes with a mother.

And I thought about that. I just thought about if you had a child and it came with this little baggie with a little booklet and it said, "This is how it operates and this is what you do to make it work right." It doesn't come like that. The mother figures that out as she goes.

She—she figures that out. She does the work, the hard work of writing that manual in certain—in certain sense.

"When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child." I've seen that firsthand already, that women who are taking care of children and are really alert to what's happening with their child at the same time trying to do their work and everything. And I know that's a lot of work.

"When you look into your mother's eyes, you know that that is the purest love you can find on this earth. It is hard to beat mother love for purity." And I think we all would all agree with that.

This is really all I have to share today as far as the message part of it goes. I feel like there's so much more that could be said to honor our mothers and inspire younger sisters to be mothers.

However, I will end the message here. And I want to say thank you to all the mothers. And I also want to say a special thank you to those who are mothering children who don't have their own children.

That is also something really precious. I think Mother's Day applies to you as well. Because there's some—there's a few things that bless me quite as much as when I see somebody taking interest in my children and taking—making an effort to protect them when I'm not there to see everything. I really appreciate that. And I want to say thank you for that.

So what are your memories of your mothers? I'm just going to share a short, quick one that's—that I feel like has been a really—a real help in my life. And I don't know if I would practice this as well as I do. And I could probably do it better.

But I, as a young man growing up, I had a ferocious temper problem. I still have to work with it, but God has helped me overcome a lot of it. But as a teenager, pre-teenager, I had a ferocious temper. And there were many times I fell out with my parents and fell out with my siblings. I didn't hardly ever get to yelling match with somebody else because that was—I don't know. For some reason, I didn't feel comfortable with that.

But I just remember more than once my mom kind of backing me into a corner and saying, "You know, Conrad, you need to apologize. You'll feel a lot better if you apologize." And you could say, "Well, it's not just about feeling better about myself." But she knew that if I could get to that point where I would admit that I was wrong and I'd say, "I'm sorry," that it would make a big difference in how the rest of the day went for all of us. And so I—that's something I started to learn how to do. And especially when I became a Christian, I realized that when I'd hurt other people and I'd done things that weren't right, I had that ability to be able to do that because my mom kindly and gently encouraged me.

She said, "You should go apologize." And somehow when she talked to me, I almost couldn't resist it. I could resist it, but there was a certain kind of persuasion she had with me that nobody else quite had with me. So I'm going to say that as to honor my mother. She's not here today right now, but I'm thankful for that input she had in my life. So I don't know if somebody has something they'd like to share that comes to their mind.

Thankfully, my mom is here. It's been—I think I calculated at least 19 years since I've had a Mother's Day with you.

Five, maybe at college. I didn't come home probably. And sorry about that. And then 10 in China and then four up here. The verse in Timothy reminded me of my mother because Maggie and her—my mother's mother, Maggie—she was a spiritual giant in her community. Everybody knew her. And she passed that along to my mother. And when we grew up, all of our neighborhood friends knew her as the religious mother. And it was very, at the time, somewhat embarrassing to me, but she planted all kinds of seeds in me that I know that I wouldn't be following God if it wasn't for my mother. And there's—she has now moved all the way. She's always lived in Georgia her whole life in the same little spot, basically.

I mean, varied a little bit, but—and she's now moved all the way up here to be with us. And this is probably the first Mother's Day in like 20 plus many years that all three of her boys are here. So it's a great day for all of us. And I'm very thankful for you, Mom. Love you.

Well, I wanted to share what mine won't be exactly for my mother; it'll be for my parents because I—I—my—as I've shared before, when several years ago, when I did Sunday school, I have always appreciated that my parents as a whole have tried to emphasize following Jesus together. They made decisions as a unit to put Jesus first in their life. As I think you remember, I shared about when they started a Scroll Christian Bookstore when I was approximately 10. That's what that preceded Scroll Publishing, but they—both of them devoted a ton of time into that. We spent weekends. It was a nonprofit. Neither of my parents got paid. And they spent weekends for approximately four years.

Every weekend, we were doing Scroll Bookstore. And I just remember that just wanting to sacrifice themselves for God's kingdom. And then when I was in 1988, as right as we were progressing together in this journey, I remember very well when my dad and my mom said my dad was going to quit working full-time as an attorney so he'd have more time to devote to the family and to the kingdom of God. And that really stood out to me. And then a couple of years later, we moved to Tyler. And then my dad worked at home, so he had a lot more time for our family and, as I said, to serve God's kingdom. But again, my mom and dad were on this journey together.

And it really blessed me that, as I said, they—from little on up, if you know their testimony, they wanted to serve God. And when they got married, that continued. So I just wanted to give them my blessing to both of my parents for their sacrifice to follow God and to put that into their children.

Thank you.

Well, I'll be a little bit like Justin. I don't think any of you know my mom.

I visited her yesterday. She's in an assisted living. She's 96 years old. And her mind is not as sharp as it once was, but we could have some interesting conversations. I spend a fair bit of time these days trying to ask her questions because there's a whole lot of stuff that she knows that I would like to know about.

And yesterday, we were talking about when somebody moved and so forth. My mom was a big planner. She got things done. And we would tease her or tell her she should not worry about something if she was busy with something. And she said, "I'm not worrying. I'm planning ahead."

So that was her view of worrying. She was just planning ahead.

But I guess a big thing I will say about my mom is that she helped and helped and helped and helped with other people, her children, her grandchildren. She just basically did every—put all her strength into helping others, especially as her children got older and she started having more time. So yes, I have a lot to thank my mother for.

Yeah, I'm very thankful for my mother. I'm going to talk like Andre about both. Growing up, I was born in a house with the train tracks like 50 feet, 75 feet from the back door. And it wasn't a high-line track like we have here in Chambersburg. It was on the ground level, if you want to say that, easy to get on the tracks.

And I just remember growing up, I had a fear of the train tracks. And it was because—and I think Abigail can attest to this—like I heard that, you know, if you get too close, it could suck you in and stuff like that. But it was all in an effort to protect their children.

And I just appreciate that. And once I grew up a little bit, you know, being in a place didn't suck you in, but that definitely helped me stay away from the tracks.

I think some of you have met my mom, but most of you probably don't know her. A little bit of humor. She wasn't a tyrant disciplinarian, but she didn't put up with a lot of nonsense. And one afternoon—well, I have three brothers, so there were four little boys and four years, no sisters.

And we were sent out of the house. And there was a pond close by and a little stream running into the pond. And we thought it'd be fun to go down and play, even though we were not supposed to, like strictly off-limits. So an hour or two later, my mom realized everything is too quiet. So she goes looking. And there we were in the creek, covered in mud head to toe. And she told us to get back to the house. Well, we didn't want to face the music, so we took off. And she's like, "I'm not going to run after you. You have to come home. You're too small to go out on your own.

So you have to come home sometime." And she went back into the house. And one by one, we went in and faced the music. And we never again ran away from her.

All right. So I have to make a quick comment before I have to rush off for our Mother's Day plans down in Maryland and Myersville. But I will say that although a lot of times I do point out the now the differences in our theology from how I grew up, I do have to say that it was always my mom's—like she was always in devotion. She was always digging in the scriptures. She never lost that curiosity or that desire to get to know God more and just to really dig in deep. And so I think that seeped all—like that kind of rubbed off on me. And that's where I get my desire to dig deep into these things.

So I have to credit her with that. And so I really appreciate that example. She was always in the Word. And so even though I have differences now, I will always cherish that and just the office of motherhood in general. And I also will say that some of the stories that inspire me the most from scripture are actually the women. I think of Judith, unfortunately, not in a lot of Bibles, a courageous woman that saved her whole nation and the mother of the seven boys that were martyred in Second Maccabees. I love what's said about her. I'm going to read that real quick.

It said, "The mother was especially admirable and worthy of good memory. Though she saw her seven sons perish in the span of a single day, she bore it courageously because of her hope in the Lord. She encouraged each of them in the language of their fathers.

Filled with a noble spirit, she stirred her womanly reasoning with manly courage, saying to them, 'I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you breath and life, nor who arranged in order the elements within each of you. Therefore, the Creator of the world, who formed man in the beginning and devised the origin of all things, will give both breath and life back to you again in His mercy since you now disregard yourselves for the sake of His laws.'" So she just stirred them up to die courageously. She looked towards that resurrection that was coming. And that's amazing. What an amazing woman that was to be able to watch all that.

I can't imagine going through that, but she stood strong. And so I do really appreciate the strength that our mothers can give us and just how courageous they are. I don't know. I just love it. So thank you, guys.

The experience that I have with my mother, a couple of them weren't overly spiritual, but they were more of the intellectual type. And those experiences changed my life, the trajectory of my life. One was I was hired as my biscuit maker at a fast food restaurant. And I was around the corner from where she was with some other peers of mine. And we were back there using the phallus language you could probably conceive of in our conversation.

And mom walked around the corner and saw that it was me. And I looked at her and she's—and you have to remember now that this was before Google. Somewhere in my mom and dad's house, always accessible, were stacks of dictionaries, thick, thick dictionaries. And she walked around the corner and she looked at me and she said, "With all of the vocabulary in the world at your fingertips, why would you want to show your ignorance with such language?" And then she walked off.

And that wasn't the loving mother, you know, the loving mother. It was loving, but not in—it was hard, tough love. And she walked off and it changed the trajectory of my life. Another time, I came home from fifth grade and I was the last of eight kids, military pay, waitress pay. We never had a lot. So I came home and said, "Some guy at school came to our room and wanted to know if anybody wanted to play an instrument." And I raised my hand and he looked at me and said, "Looks like you might could play a trumpet."

So I went home and asked my mom, "Mom, can I play the trumpet?" And she already went through seven other kids asking the same thing. She never hesitated once. She said, "We'll go down tomorrow and we'll rent one and see if you like it." She rented an old cornet that I played from the fifth grade till I was a senior when I bought my first trumpet.

And it added a dimension into my life that never would have been there without her love, both types of love. So I appreciate her for those things. Thank you.

Anyone else?

I guess if we don't have anyone else, Bruce, would you lead us in prayer and then we can have a song?