Mothers Day????

      I’m not the first person writing a church column disinterested in the big commercial to-do around Mother’s Day.  I can get pretty scathing about the modern observance of Anna Jarvis’ memorial for her mother Ann in 1905.  (Although I have to admit Ann Reeves Jarvis was quite a person, a peace activist who tended the wounded on both sides of the Civil War and who founded Mother’s Day Work Clubs to address public health issues.)

      Without ignoring the fathers and grandfathers also rearing, loving, supporting, and protecting children, this is a very tough time for mothers right now.
    
      Hundreds of mothers in our near vicinity are trying to keep families together without enough resources— money, food, housing, medical care, education— every day, not just Sunday, May 11.  Some have suddenly found themselves in circumstances that have changed.  Some are young and single parents coping with hardly any supports from the beginning.  We know they are around, but mostly we keep them off to the side of our thoughts.  This week, let’s remember their hard work.

      The last months have seen some terrifying events brutally impacting mothers.  There was the young mother whose mother and daughter were killed in the Washington mudslide.  The television cameras have dwelled long on the crying mothers of flight 370 and the Korean ferry sinking.  But we glimpsed again the mothers of the victims of last year’s Boston Marathon bombing.  The mothers who buried children because of gun violence still cry.  My heart is most broken for the mothers of the 276 girls stolen from school in Nigeria.  But it also breaks for mothers in war-torn areas and occupied territories.  Haitian mothers are still recovering.  Mothers in hospital and hospice cradle their children.  We know of mothers whose children have run away or have become hard to live with.  This month we are reminded of the families dealing with mental illness and brain disorders.  Mothers are addicted or impaired themselves or try to help children who are.  Sometimes it’s just the usual stresses and strains of just plain regular life that make motherhood hard.

      This is not the stuff of greeting cards and frilly jewelry.

      Days are brutal for mothers.

      It is incumbent on faith communities to be leveraging assistance and advocacy in support of mothers’ issues and needs.  There are many ways we can do that through church and community channels; but a moment’s search and you can find ways that fit your concerns and abilities.  In fact, since Ann Reeves Jarvis was herself a powerful worker for good, perhaps that would be a far more suitable celebration of Mother’s Day for us to undertake!

      So let’s get serious, not sentimental, about this Mother’s Day.

                                                                                        In Christ,
                                                                                    
                                                                                        David

Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible           Psalm 23
      From the New Testament       Acts 2:42-47
      From the Gospel                    John 10:1-10