Sunday is Mother’s Day and we will celebrate the mothers in our lives. For many of us motherhood has a positive connotation: you have a good mother or being a mother has been a major source of blessing for you. I also realize Mother’s Day does not have positive feelings for everyone attending our services on Sunday, and for that I am sorry. Mothers are given to us from God to be a source of blessing and the backbone of a healthy society. Whether motherhood evokes positive or negative feelings, society needs to recognize the value mothers are intended to have for all of us. 

Motherhood and womanhood in general have always been under some kind of attack, and our current times are not different. In the extreme feminist movement motherhood is viewed as an impediment for a woman in achieving her greatest success. The recent confusion of gender has been most acutely directed toward women. Biological men assuming the identity of a woman is a horrible affront to the importance of biological women in our society. The ancient text of Proverbs provides a counter cultural depiction of women and in particular, mothers.

The teaching and training of children is the critical function of the family unit for the propagation of a healthy society. History has shown us governments make for bad parents and don’t even come close to replicating the effectiveness of a husband and wife – a father and mother raising children together. In our text on Sunday, we will see the needed partnership of a father and mother sharing roles and responsibilities of shaping the next generation. Because it is Mother’s Day, we will emphasize the importance of mothers to care for and influence their children in a way that reflects God’s design for humans. Not only is God honored when we acknowledge the value of our mothers, humankind will prosper because mothers are the backbone to a healthy society.