“Mother’s Day”
has just come and gone and, as usual, it has left me thinking about the power
of relationships.
Pick up any
Mother’s Day card and you will find words like; love, sacrifice, care, nurture
and compassion. We honour mothers
because they demonstrate these sorts qualities.
We appreciate how selfless they are and how give themselves to their
families without expecting much in return. Mothers have a powerful influence
because they invest in others.
The same attitudes
that create strong and healthy families are the exact same attitudes that needed
for a strong and healthy church. In
fact, if you read the first fifteen verses of virtually every New Testament letter,
you will find words of care and affection because these letters were written
not only to instruct, but also to strengthen, encourage and nurture.
Churches as a
whole, and we as individual church members, make a huge mistake when we think
that faith is an individual undertaking.
No one would ever say this, but I often see people acting as if they
have no responsibility to help, encourage or look after anyone else. That is simply not true! Churches are not meant to be a group of
individuals who keep everyone else at arm’s length.
In Genesis 4:9,
Adam and Eve’s son Cain asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” He thought that the
obvious answer was “No!” He thought that
he was only responsible for himself.
However, God
makes it clear that he actually was supposed to be his brother’s keeper! He was supposed to look after him and care
for him. His brother actually was his
responsibility and he was not supposed to just live for himself. Rather, he was supposed to care about his
brother’s well-being as much as his own.
If you want to
make a difference in the lives of those around you, think about what a good
mother would do and then follow that example.
God’s family needs people, both men and women, who can “mother” one
another.
“Dear friends,
let us love one another, for love comes from God” (1 John 4:7).
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