love on Childbirth

When my niece bore her first child, she invited her brother and mother to stand in the delivery room. After witnessing three hours of pushing, when the baby finally crowned, my nephew turned to his mo...

[Christ] gives the analogy of bitter labor and says: “A woman when she bears a child has anguish and sorrow” (John 16:21) and He applies all of this to His suffering, in which He so hard and bitterly ...

A mother’s service is the most intimate, willing, and dependable of all services, because it is truest of all. None has been able to fulfill it properly but Christ, and he alone can.  We know that ou...

Life is precious. Not because it is unchangeable, like a diamond, but because it is vulnerable, like a little bird. To love life means to love its vulnerability, asking for care, attention, guidance, ...

As a mother you learn what it is to be both martyr and devil. In motherhood I have experienced myself as both more virtuous and more terrible, and more implicated too in the world’s virtue and terror,...

Rediscovering the Wonder of Jesus’ Birth It is said that familiarity breeds contempt, but sometimes familiarity breeds something far less intense, but equally as destructive—complacency. As a child,...

Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.

James Loder, in his book The Logic of the Spirit, talks about a woman with whom he had been in a therapeutic relationship for years. This woman’s underlying issue seemed to be a complete sense of reje...

The incarnation has often been described as “The Great Exchange,” whereupon God took on human form so that we might participate in God's divine life (through the Holy Spirit). In a sermon on the n...

Motherhood is a million little moments that God weaves together with grace, redemption, laughter, tears, and most of all, love.

"There's nothing like your mother's sympathetic voice to make you want to burst into tears."

Loving God, You knit us together in our mother’s womb and breathe us into being. Thank you for the gift of life and for bringing us into this world through our mothers. We recognize the risk they took...

The angel said there would be no end to his kingdom.  So for three hundred days I carried rivers and cedars and mountains.  Stars spilled in my belly when he turned. Now I can’t stop touching hi...

Mother’s Day is complicated for a pastor. Among the happy families that are celebrating, there are children who were abused by mothers, mothers who lost lost a child, and women suffering from inferti...

Prayer is suitable for Mother's Day and Father's Day. On Mother's Day, omit the opening scripture reading. Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who ...

A preaching professor at Harvard University tells the story of the year his 5-year-old son was working on an art project in his kindergarten class. It was made of plaster, resembled nothing in particu...

Come children God is calling us Gathering us Covering us with hope-filled wings Come children Rest against our Beloved’s breast Nurtured and nourished On the milk of love and kindness

Preaching Commentary Rediscovering the Wonder of Jesus’ Birth It is said that familiarity breeds contempt, but sometimes familiarity breeds something far less intense, but equally as destructive—co...

There is a story from Czech bishop Monsignor Hnilica of a Christmas Eve with Saint Teresa of Calcutta. There was a knock on the convent’s door during their simple but festive dinner, and the nun who w...

This total self-giving, to which the Son and the Spirit respond by an equal self-giving, is a kind of “death,” a first, radical “kenosis,” as one might say. It is a kind of “super-death” that is a com...

An eight-year-old boy had a younger sister who was dying of leukemia, and he was told that without a blood transfusion she would die. His parents explained to him that his blood was probably compatibl...

Live to the point of tears.

An empty-nester friend of mine was recently reflecting on the long days at home with a growing family. “You just gotta keep slinging chow,” she said with a laugh. I laughed too . . . but not quite as ...

This is the paschal feast, the Lord’s passing from death to life: so cries the Spirit. …You have protected us, Jesus, from endless disaster. You spread your hands like a mother and, mothe...

We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.

Break out the carnations! Mother's Day is coming. Mother's Day is a little tricky for pastors, though. It's a spring morning, things are finally warming up (in Northern climes, anyway), an...

Leader: Mother's Day can be full of joy and celebration, but it can also be challenging for many people. So as we pray for all mothers, let us also pray for those who are struggling today. All: ...

A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.

Creator God, By Your Grace we are born and born again, Like a mother, You long to comfort Your children, Your Son longed to gather us as a hen gathers her chicks. The love of earthly mothers echoes Y...

I never met my father-in-law; he died when my wife was a young girl. But I admire him tremendously because of the intuition he had as a new husband. At church the day after his wedding, having consumm...