“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
1 John 4:7-8
In May, we celebrate the Christian Church’s birthday on Pentecost Sunday (May 28) and our biological and spiritual Mothers (May 14).
Among our diverse Christian family, the view of the Church as a Mother is held by several church traditions. Birthing, feeding, and nurturing are motherly attributes that characterize the Church at her motherly best.
The motherhood of the Church is also closely linked to the understanding of God as a mother. A line from a song that I heard when I was attending a concert at Central Philippine University in the mid-1980s sought to explain why God can be compared to a mother (that is, a good mother). It goes:
“Nobody loves you like your mother, God is mother, too.”
A Swedish Baptist singer visiting our campus sang this song that he had composed about the motherhood of God. He was making a provocative theological statement that challenged the audience who was used to praying to “Our Father.”
I cannot recall all the lines of the song, but the last line remains in my memory. And it went like this:
“Love is of God, and God is mother, too.”
The song’s closing line made a good argument about God’s identity, based on sound biblical teaching about God’s nature: “God is love” (1 John 4:7-8).
God loves us like a good mother who cares for and protects her children. This is the same God who birthed and empowered the Church to become like a mother to all who are gathered to be empowered and equipped and sent out into the world to serve as God’s children.
We thank and praise God for all the ways we receive motherly care in every season of our lives.
May we live in such a way that honors and celebrates the mothers in our lives.
Happy birthday to the Church here at CBC, in Woodbury, and all over the world!
Happy Mother’s Day to all who give birth, care for, and nurture children and young people!
Yours in Christ’s love,
Pastor Carla
PHOTO CREDIT: crk 2023
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