mothers on Life after Death

In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery? “The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to pre...

Thank You, Lord, for the gifts of life, of love and of care that come from You, wrapped in our moms and step-moms, in our grand-moms, great-grandmas, daughters, sisters, and aunts. We’re grateful for...

I don’t have the nerve to stand up on Christmas Eve and preach about the choreography of childbirth, but I wish I did. I wish I had the nerve to preach about Mary’s increased estrogen production, a...

In his book The Logic of the Spirit, James Loder 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 rejec...

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...

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 ...

Children are God’s gifts to immature people to help them grow up. They are also God’s gifts to help parents go deep with God. . . . Parenting is not for anything. It is not a contract with God in whic...

Parker Palmer’s book Let Your Life Speak arrested my heart a few years back. It begins with a poem by William Stafford, “Ask Me”, that begs this question: “Some time when the river is ice ask me mista...

We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts”

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 ...

Father-God, our burden bearer; Jesus, God the Son and lover of our souls; Spirit of God–giver of life and power: Thank You! Thank You for those we love and those who love us. Thank You for mothers and...

Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.

I saw the blessed Trinity working. I saw that there were three attributes: fatherhood, motherhood, and lordship—all in one God. In the almighty Father we have been sustained and blessed with regard to...

O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all ...

If I were damned of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.

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...

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,...

Davon Huss tells the story of a boy who came home one hot afternoon, anxious to take a cool swim in the pond behind his home. He lived in south Florida, so taking a quick dip was a common way to cool ...

In his excellent book, The Magnificent Story , James Bryan Smith shares a true story from Japanese culture that illustrates just how demanding strict disciplinarian fathers can be. The Japanese...

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...

Pastor: In peace, let us pray to the Lord:  People: Lord, have mercy. Pastor: For the holy Christian Church, here and scattered throughout the world, and for the proclamation of the Gospel and the...

A mother ran into the bedroom when she heard her seven-year-old son scream. She found his two-year-old sister pulling his hair. She gently released the little girl’s grip and said comfortingly to the ...

For those who deeply want children and are denied them, those missing babies hover like silent ephemeral shadows over their lives. Who can describe the feel of a tiny hand that is never held?

Mothers can forgive anything! Tell me all, and be sure that I will never let you go, though the whole world should turn from you.

Have you ever heard the story of the mother who wanted to teach her daughter a moral lesson? She gave the little girl a quarter and a dollar for church “Put whichever one you want in the collection pl...

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...

As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother... We were created by the motherhood of love, a mother’s love which never leaves us.

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

Leader: Loving God, you know us through and through, having knit us together in our mothers’ wombs. People: We praise you for gathering us like a mother hen, for protecting us with the ferocity of a...