Mother's Day is a month away! I think these special days are the most difficult to prepare a message for. Do mothers come to church expecting to be praised? Do they expect to be challenged? Do they even want to be addressed from the pulpit on their day, or does Mother's Day only matter on the family level?
As I have been thinking about this for a few weeks now, one thing is certain. No one ever had a perfect mother, (although my own mom has a lot to be proud of) and only one mother ever had a perfect son. (this is not one of the things that my mom has to be proud of!)
If addressed from the pulpit, will this be difficult for those praying to become mothers? Will this be difficult for those mothers that have lost children? How does one make this an all inclusive message? Does it need to be, or can we focus on one group?
As an aside, I found out last night that the only reason I have the opportunity to preach on Mother's Day is because the Pastor who was first asked said he'd rather preach on a different week! No wonder.
8 comments:
I'm not going to tell you what to preach...but as a woman who struggled with sustaining a pregnancy, the Mother's Day message was always hard on me.
At some churches they even hand out roses to all the mothers....that really hurts when your heart is aching to be a mommy, but God hasn't blessed you with that yet.
As a mother now, I don't expect or even want a sermon geared towards moms....just a good, Bible-based, spirit-lead message. :)
Now on the family level, and from my husband....that's a different story! (Jon, could you remind your brother to buy some flowers this year?!)
As a mother, I never looked to be praised from the pulpit. And I'm a little sensitive about those who yearn for motherhood and God has not blessed them that way. Knowing you, you'll be able to come up with a challenging message for those moms that need it and a word of encouragement for those that don't have that privilege. I know the Lord will give you the right message...and I wish I could be there to hear it....
Discipleship!!! Every mom needs to be reminded of the big eternal picture to make sense out of the very daily, very draining, very mundane, and sometimes very discouraging struggles on the homefront. It is so easy to lose our perspective and our purpose in the midst of snotty noses, lost shoes, and incessant sibling squabbles.
Every woman, even those who can't conceive and those who have lost children, need to have their fire ignited over the area of discipleship. (Perhaps those personal circumstances are the God-ordained avenue by which they will find their most effective discipleship opportunities.) As Titus points out, a woman's primary mission field is her children, but it certainly isn't her only one.
I definitely don't want to be buttered up! We all have too many guilty memories to believe any of those platitudes could be true about us anyway. Let's leave behind the romantic notion of motherhood and be real.
That's my two cents. The men always get commissioned on Father's Day (and usually on Mother's Day too), why do the women always miss out on those passionate messages? Stir us up to love and good works!
I would like to state my disagreement that your mother never had a perfect son.
My wife and I generally strongly consider skipping Mother's Day services for the reasons you mentioned. While she usually downplays it, the flowers for mothers is a slap in the face.
What if the flowers were given to all the women? Will this make it less special?
No mother wants to hold a flower while walking by a woman who can't take one because she doesn't "qualify". Personally, I find the whole flower thing embarrassing anyway.
all women? (what age?)
all wives?
It's a special day even for women who aren't mothers, because they HAVE mothers.
Let the mothers get something from the people they are mothers to?
Thanks for considering everyone.
I always dread Mother's Day, I usually get asked to be a nursery worker, which is truly a slap in the face. Seeing that I am still not a mother. Is this hard for me? You bet. Do I still yearn to be a mother? For sure. I guess my advice is don't focus so much on the mom part, but that of us being a godly woman and being a example to this younger generation of girls, I pray there are girls out there that would come to me for godly counsel and that I would be the kind of woman that they would aspire to be.
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