The Need For Mothers

By W. Frank Walton

    We are commanded to “honor your…mother” (Eph 6:2). This imaginary classified ad for a mother illustrates the great work that good and godly mothers do day in and day out.
    IMMEDIATE OPENING: There is a need for a Christian woman who has a well-rounded personality to help nurture children, with the help of an adult male, and thereby shape the next generation. She must be loving, patient and understanding, especially with a Christ-like demeanor. She must demonstrate strength of character and perseverance under various stressful conditions. This work requires stamina, involving long hours around the clock. Applicant must have management skills to multi-task various demands without going crazy. She must posses practical nursing skills, dietary expertise, wisdom in counseling, a knowledge of etiquette, cooking and custodial ability. The ability to drive is a must in the transport of children, but no taxi license is required. She must have some basic knowledge of how to do homework. Most importantly, she must have the ability to instill godly virtues, by word and example, into the hearts of impressionable children. No written test is required. There is no salary, but the rewards are heavenly.
    Mothering is a great work of nurturing the next generation. “What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin” (H. W. Beecher). I remember a USA Today report several years ago about crack-drug houses in Chicago, where homeless people lived like a commune in abandoned buildings. Several police officers investigated the scene and a little 9 year old girl ran up and grabbed a female police officer and said, “Will you be my mommy??”
    How touching! There is, in each child, an inbuilt need for a mother’s love.
    For mothers, God’s wants older women to “admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed’ (Titus 2:4-5). Let’s be thankful and appreciative of the great work these good mothers do. These queens of the home make it a well-managed haven of love and virtue (1 Tim 2:14, 5:14).
    Proverbs 31 is God’s advertisement for a worthy mother: “A worthy woman, who can find? For her worth is far above jewels. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her…’Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her the fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates’” (Prov 31:10,28-31). Abraham Lincoln said, “No man is poor who had a godly mother.”
- via The Contender, the weekly bulletin published by the Walnut Grove Church of Christ in Benton, KY.  Kevin Williams preaches for the congregation.  He may be contacted through the church's website: http://walnutgrovechurchofchrist.org/