Yesterday was mother’s day, for most of us a time to celebrate our earthly mothers and in some cases grieve their loss. However yesterday in her sermon Morgan Schmidt reminded us that there are many images of God as mother in the Bible. God is both the perfect mother and the perfect father.
Yesterday afternoon I sat and contemplated some of the beautiful imagery of God as mother. Our world tends to be dominated by images of God as father, the images of the nurturing, caring God who holds us, grieves with us and laughs with us are less common.
It occurred to me that many of Jesus parables are really images of what a mother does for us:
As a mother nurtures and feeds us, God feeds us in the feeding of the 5,000.
As a mother binds up the skinned knee of her child, God binds up our wounds in the story of the Good Samaritan.
good samaritan – african from Jesusmafa.com
As a mother comforts and surrounds her children with love so God surrounds us
As a mother bears a child’s pain whenever possible and suffers with us when we hurt so Jesus bore our pain on the cross
Art by He Qi
There are other images that come to mind too.
As a mother believes in and brings to fulfillment the hopes and dreams of her children so God believes in our hopes and dreams.
Like a mother, God is the one who loves when it makes no sense.
We always recognize our mother’s voice and so too God is the one who calls us with a voice we always know.
A good mother is one who like God, desires our healing and brings us to wholeness.
Mothering will fill you with love, it will break your heart. It is the best thing in the world.
May we all remember God as our mother today.