God's Motherly Qualities

Though we usually think of God as Heavenly Father, God has motherly qualities as well.

I recall a church service a few years ago when the pastor made that point.

Early on a coolish Sunday morning in the spring, I was walking around the area near our Bed and Breakfast place in Plymouth, England, looking for a church.  It was windy and threatening rain, but  I found several churches in a cluster: Church of England, which Episcopalians in this country claim kin to; Roman Catholic, Presbyterian.  Eventually I found a Baptist church.  I checked the time for their morning service.  So Pansy and I went back there for church.

The Plymouth Baptist Church traces its connections back to the 16-hundreds when the Pilgrims from all around England gathered at Plymouth to sail for “the New World.”  Presumably, some of those Pilgrims went to a Baptist church on that site as they prepared for the voyage.

I would guess the sanctuary could seat five or six hundred people.  But there were maybe forty or fifty people there.  This is their usual attendance.  But they were a warm, welcoming congregation, and we had a meaningful worship experience.

It turned out, this was what the Brits call “Mothering Sunday.”  At the end of the service, every woman was given a bouquet of daffodils.  We have never seen so many daffodils as we saw on this trip to England.  As we rode on trains from one town to another, we saw banks of daffodils growing on the hillsides.  And in town after town, daffodils were everywhere---in parks, in flower beds, in window boxes. Just about everywhere we looked.  So it wasn’t surprising to see daffodils for all the women on Mothering Day.

This event comes on the fourth Sunday of Lent each year, so the date varies according to the date for Easter.   Back in the 17th century, when Mothering Sunday became popular, it often was a day off for household servants in England.  Many servants to the wealthy were poor people, often younger people, who worked a great distance from their homes.  So the wealthy families developed the practice of giving their servants a day off so they could travel to their own homes to be with their mothers. (http://www.holidays.net/mother/story.htm).

The preacher at that Baptist church in Plymouth, England, on that Mothering Day preached a sermon pertaining to mothers.  I’m not using his sermon, but I am using a Bible passage he used.

We have our stereotyped versions of how men ought to act and how women ought to act. “Real men don’t cry.” Women are supposed to be softer and more caring.  So it ‘s OK for women to be sentimental.  It’s OK for women to cry.  With these generalities in our minds about what fathers are supposed to be and what mothers are supposed to be, it’s no wonder the Bible has to tell us that God has characteristics we associate with mothers as well as those we associate with fathers.

RETHINKING STEREOTYPES

Years ago, I supervised the writing and editing of all the magazines for the national offices of the Baptist Woman’s Missionary Union in Birmingham.  The very fact that a man had that significant job in the women’s organization drew attention in Baptist circles.  

I was asked to teach a couples class in our church in Birmingham.  This was in the 1970s when a great deal of focus was on more freedom for women. One Sunday, somebody asked me who should be the head of the house.    I told them, Pansy and I try to let God be the head of the house, and we share decisions.  I said we both have heads and we both use our heads.  Some in the class thought that sounded all right.  But a he-man type named Walt and his wife Wanda were in the Sunday school class, and Walt didn’t like what I said.

So I asked Walt how we should decide who should be the head of the house.  He said, “It ought to be the fellow who brings home the paycheck.”  I said, “What if the fellow who brings home the paycheck is the wife?”  

TRANSITION TO  THE BIBLE PASSAGES:

Our Bible passages for today give several characteristics of God, based on aspects of human personality we think of as motherly qualities.

First, consider the analogy Jesus uses concerning a mother hen and her chickens:

1. God offers protection and nurture.

Jesus compares himself to a mother hen.  Not a rooster, mind you, but a hen.

He is in Jerusalem, realizing his earthly ministry is near an end.  He recalls the way prophets in the past were slain in Jerusalem, the city that prided itself as being God’s special city. The holy city.

As he thinks of this great city with many unholy aspects, he says to Jerusalem,

How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings .  .  .

If you grew up on a farm, you probably have seen the attention a hen gives her children, starting back before they hatch.  A hen sits on a bunch of eggs, protecting them and keeping them warm till they were ready to peck their way out of the eggs.

From time to time, it was my job to gather the eggs.  These were fresh, unfertilized eggs, not the ones the hens would sit on to hatch some babies.  I would go inside the hen house and look for eggs.  Sometimes the hens didn’t want you fooling around in their house, so it wasn’t always easy to gather the eggs.

Also, I remember seeing hens whose eggs had been fertilized.   They would sit on the eggs and would fly all over you if you messed with the eggs at that point.

Then, when the babies hatched, they stayed close to their mother until they were able to go it alone.  If you never saw a mother hen with a brood of chicks,  you missed a powerful example of a mother caring for her children, protecting them from the dangers which came their way.  She would spread her wings and start clucking, to call her biddies to her and get them under her wings.

Jesus here compares his care for the people of Jerusalem to the care a hen has for her babies.

The sad thing is: His chicks in Jerusalem refused his offer.

A baby chick who refuses its mother’s protection will be in trouble for sure. But the happy word for British Mothering Sunday, or any other day, is that we need not refuse God’s motherly protection.

Clement of Alexandria was a Christian leader who lived about two centuries after Jesus.  Clement enlarged this comparison to include other farm animals as he thinks of the church as our mother:

Just as the male and female parent regard their young tenderly–whether it be horses their colts, or cows their calves, or lions their cubs, or deer their fawn or men and women their children–so too does the Father of all draw near to those who seek his aid, giving them a new birth and making them his own adopted children. He recognizes them as his little ones, he loves only them, and he comes to the aid of such as these and defends them. That is why he calls them his children.

The motherly comparison Jesus uses is short and sweet.

The analogy from Isaiah is more elaborate, giving four different motherly qualities which also are qualities of God or of Jerusalem as the city of God.

In the verses I’ve chosen from Isaiah 66, before the prophet gets to the motherly  qualities, he uses another analogy to picture God’s abundant care for his children.  His loving care is as free flowing as a river or stream.  Listen to the first first part of verse 12:

For thus says the LORD: "Behold, I will extend prosperity to her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream .”

Then the analogy changes to God’s motherly characteristics:

Again, there are four of these:

God will feed you.

God will carry you along in times of need.

God will give you pleasure.

God will comfort you.

The first three of these are expressed in specific terms, describing tender, loving actions a parent readily does for a baby.  The first two are things usually associated with the mother.  The first is unquestionably the role of the mother.

2. God will feed you.  Isaiah says you will nurse at God’s breast.

These infant analogies suggest the loving, patient care God extends to us.  Second Isaiah in chapter 66 gives this vivid metaphor of God as tender loving mother feeding her infant at her breast: 

"Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her;

rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her;

[11] that you may suck and be satisfied with her consoling breasts;

that you may drink deeply with delight from the abundance of her glory."

[12] For thus says the LORD,  "Behold, I will extend prosperity to her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream;

and you shall suck, you shall be carried upon her hip, and dandled upon her knees.

[13] As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

[14] You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice; your bones shall flourish like the grass;

and it shall be known that the hand of the LORD is with his servants, and his indignation is against his enemies.

These comparisons also remind us of how totally dependent on God we really are.  We forget so easily.  We make ourselves think we can go it alone.  But the Lord says through Isaiah, we need God every bit as much as a baby needs its mother.  We have the promise that God will supply all our needs. according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19).  And that is a wonderful promise.

So, again, Isaiah uses the figure of God as mother, the basic supplier of food for the infant.

An older woman was being interviewed on the radio about how she and her husband raised their children.  The interviewer was a younger person who was trying to find out about shared responsibilities between husband and wife.  And I believe fathers and husbands ought to share the responsibilities of parenting with the mothers and wives.

So the host asked this older woman, “When one of the babies cried at night and needed to be fed, who took care of that?”  The woman said, “We didn’t use bottles and formulas, so there wasn’t any question about who would feed the baby!”

So we can say of God in the motherly role: 

There isn’t any question about who would feed the baby!

God nourishes our spirits.

3.  The next thing Isaiah says about the care we will receive from God as mother:  God will carry you along in times of need.  And notice the way we will be carried as God fills the role of mother to us: you shall be carried upon her hip.

How many times have you seen a youngish mother with her baby on her hip?  Can you picture that?   That seems to be a characteristic female stance.  Dads carry their babies, but I can’t readily envision a man with a baby on his hip.  

The basic picture is that of a parent  -- a mother -- carrying a child when the child is unable to go it alone.

There’s a story which has appeared in several forms, with claims of authorship going to several different women.  Sometimes known as “Footprints in the Sand,” sometimes simply as “Footprints.”   Here is one version:

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. 

Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.

In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were  

two sets of footprints, other times there was one only.

This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, 

when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one 

set of footprints, so I said to the  Lord,

“You promised me Lord, that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. 

But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my  life 

there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, 

when I  needed you most, have you not been there for me?”

The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of  footprints, 

my child, is when I carried you” (Stevenson “Footprints in the Sand”  )

The “Footprints” story tells us,  God is with us at all times: beside us when we need a friend; underneath us when we need to be upheld.

We may not realize we need God to bear us along.

We may forget the power of God to sustain us.  

We may think we can help God as He carries us along.

Here’s a story which probably didn’t really happen.  Just a story preachers tell, but let me tell it anyway. A young man was walking down the road carrying a bag so heavy it almost weighted him to the ground.  He struggled to keep going, sweating under the load.  A man in a large, air-conditioned car stopped and asked the boy where he was going.  Then the man told  the young fellow he would take him to his destination.  The boy got in the car, but he kept the heavy load on his lap.  As they rode along, the man said, “Son, there’s no need for you to sit there with that bag on your lap.  From the way you were struggling with it out on the road, I could tell it was weighing you down.  For goodness sake, put the bag in the back seat so you can rest and relax.”  The boy said, “Oh, no, sir.  I couldn’t do that.  You’re doing me enough of a favor to let me ride.  I can’t add to the load on the car.  I’ll keep on holding it.”

God will carry us along in difficult times if we will let Him.

Bishop Lancelot Andrewes prayed this prayer in the 17th century.  I have seen this near his tomb in London's Southwark Cathedral:

Lord, be Thou within me to strengthen me;   

Without me, to keep me;   

Above me, to protect me;   

Beneath me, to uphold me;   

Before me, to direct me-------  

Behind me, to keep me from straying;   

Round about me, to defend me.      

Blessed be Thou, O Lord, our Father, forever and ever.    Amen.  

God carries us along through the difficulties of life.  Not removing the difficulties, but providing inner strength for us in the difficulties.

4. Also the motherly figure in Isaiah will give pleasure.  She will dandle you on her knee.   

That is, the mother will hold the child on her knee and do things to make the baby happy.  The Hebrew word translated as “dandle” suggests being caressed or smoothed (Blue Letter Bible).  Dandle also can be interpreted this way: “I’m going to bounce you on my knee,” 

You’ve seen parents bounce their little ones and sing, “Get up horsy, go to town.  Take care of baby and don’t fall down.”

God will provide not only our needs but will provide us with pleasant things as well.    

Even a mother in dire poverty will look for ways to make life pleasant for her children.

I’ve heard people talk about hard times in their growing up years.  People will say, “We were poor, but we didn’t know we were poor.”  Well, if they had been as poor as we were, they would have known it.   Daddy’s work was irregular.  We were often on welfare. There was uncertainty about how the bills were to be paid, how we were going to get school clothes, or how much longer the grocery store would extend credit and let Daddy buy more food. Facing all that, Mother tried to make life pleasant for her five children.  Despite our poverty, Mother struggled and prayed and found ways to provide us with a few pleasures.  

Radio programs for kids had all sorts of boxtop offers.  One time Tom Mix had a plastic arrowhead with a compass, and a magnifying glass built into it. That Blackhawk Arrowhead glowed in the dark. It figured into his current adventure, so all Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters wanted to have one.  That arrowhead from Tom Mix cost fifteen cents plus a boxtop from Shredded Ralston cereal.  When even an extra fifteen cents was difficult to come by in, Mother managed to scrape up that much money from somewhere, and I got that marvelous Black Hawk Arrowhead.   I was a few years too old and few pounds too heavy to sit on her knee, but the way Mother found that fifteen cents for me to send off the boxtop offer was the modern equivalent of her dandling me on her knee.

5. The final thing the motherly act in Isaiah is to provide comfort:

As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you.

We could think of this in two different ways:  

There are specific times when our hearts are broken and we need the love we associate with a Mother to comfort us and help us pick up the broken pieces.  We might also think of this as a summary of all the kind motherly things which make life better for us.  Either way, our mothers often are sources of comfort when we are children and on into adulthood.

Second Isaiah is calling wayward children to come back to the tender, comforting motherly love.  

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling for you and for me;
See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching,
Watching for you and for me.

Why should we tarry when Jesus is pleading,
Pleading for you and for me?
Why should we linger and heed not His mercies,
Mercies for you and for me?

Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,
Passing from you and from me;
Shadows are gathering, deathbeds are coming,
Coming for you and for me.

Oh, for the wonderful love He has promised,
Promised for you and for me!
Though we have sinned, He has mercy and pardon,
Pardon for you and for me.
Come home, come home 
[Like a mother calling her children to come home for supper],

   Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home! (Will L. Thompson)