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 ...
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
In her compelling memoir Still Life , author Gillian Marchenko recounts her struggles with depression. In this excerpt, Marchenko shares a funny but poignant moment as she deals with the challenges...
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?
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...
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 ...
Jeremiah 3:13, 1 Peter 5:7, Romans 8:38-39, Matthew 11:28, Isaiah 66:13, Psalm 27:10, Isaiah 49:15-16
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...
John 1:14, Isaiah 53:3-5, Luke 2:7, Psalm 22:9-10, Revelation 12:4-5, Genesis 35:16-20
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...
Isaiah 49:15, Matthew 23:37-39, Hosea 11:3-4, Isaiah 66:13, Deuteronomy 32:18
God of all peace, We thank You for mothers For their nurture, For their unnoticed sacrifices, And for their care that showed us What Your love looks like before we knew Your name. We praise You for ...
Author and blogger Shontell Brewer offers this fictional, but very realistic bio of a modern Christian mother trying to balance all the activities of a mother today: Sally is a stay-at-home mom of t...
I was standing in line in a crowded public rest room engaged in one of my favorite hobbies, people watching, when I observed a brief interaction between a mother and daughter. Mother looked harried an...
I never considered myself a perfectionist before I had children. Perfectionism was someone else’s problem. It was the affliction of those pasty-faced library moles that haunted the campus stacks on Sa...
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...
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 ...
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,...
Leader: On this day of celebrating mothers, We remember and lift up our mothers to the Lord. Mothers of young children, first-time mothers, Working mothers, and single mothers People of God: We see...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
Job 3:1-26, Psalm 94:19, 1 Peter 5:7, Matthew 14:22-33
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...
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: ...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...