A Mother's Day Secret

Whether a day joyful or mournful, frustrating or celebrating, longing or loss, Mother’s Day shows us truth about God.

There’s a secret about Mother’s Day.

Whether today brims with joy and gratitude, frustrates you with logistics and honoring the several mothers in your life, or mixes sweet celebration with bitter grief and longing, the secret about Mother’s Day is this: Mother’s Day shows us truth about God. The nature and practice of mothering—of becoming and being a mom—make the immeasurable riches of Jesus known. There are images all over the Scripture where God describes his love for his people with motherly images. And when we see the best of moms doing their thing, it should point us to God’s powerful love for his people in Christ.

A Word of Caution

Now, let me make sure you understand something on the front end. I do not think we can refer to God as “Our Mother.” It has become almost trendy in some Christian circles to call God “mother.” But the Bible never calls God “mother. We can’t call God “Mother” because God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is called “Our Father”, but never “mother.”

The Bible does use motherly imagery for the Lord, but it always uses it as a comparison or simile. For example, we might say a courageous person is “as brave as a lion.” We would never think that the person is actually a lion, but that they are in their bravery like a lion. The Bible often uses such language to describe God. The fancy theological words for this are “analogical” and “accommodated” language. God describes himself with pictures and things we can understand (analogical) and in a way we can understand (accommodated). Scripture’s description of God Our Father does not let us call him “God Our Mother.” Anyone who tells you otherwise is making up stuff and isn’t telling you the truth.

What Scripture does do though, pretty frequently, is describe God’s actions with motherly qualities. It uses simile and comparisons, using something we all understand — a mother’s love — to describe the way that God relates to his people. In other words, Mother’s Day and reflecting on motherhood helps to better understand God Our Father, Jesus Our Savior, and the Holy Spirit Our Comforter. It does this by showing us two primary truths about God.

God Gives Us Life

Isaiah 46:3 startles us with that analogical kind of language I mentioned above:

Listen to me O house of Jacob,
all the remnant of the house of Israel
who have been borne by me from before your birth
carried from the womb.

Now, to understand this verse fully, you have to understand this context. Right before this verse, in 46:1-2, we see that Yahweh the God of Israel is contrasted to the idols of Babylon. They have to be carried on a donkey, and they can be taken, captured. In contrast, the God of Israel is the one who does the carrying. He says he carried the people of Israel since before their birth, from the womb. The picture is a pregnant mother carrying her unborn child. That child completely depends on his mother for nutrition, life, protection. Before the child is pushed out into the world, he is carried in the womb.

This is a picture for the spiritual reality of God bringing Israel into being before Israel was even brought into being. God is the one who gives his people life. In contrast to the idols of this world, which people create and make, God brings his people into existence. Like a child born into the world has no control over their own conception, gestation, or birth, neither do the people of God create themselves as the people of God. This is exactly what Jesus says in John 3, where he says that unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. We must be made a new creation in union with Christ (2 Cor 5:17). We have as much control over our spiritual new birth as we do over our physical birth. Peter says that God caused us to be born again or birthed us into a living hope (1 Peter 1:3).

So here’s the deal: when you think about your mom today, and the fact that she birthed you, carried you in her womb, thank her and spoil her. And let your thoughts of her move you toward God’s miraculous work of regeneration — giving new life, new birth, resurrection.

God Sustains Our Life

Isaiah doesn’t stop there. In the next verse, 46:4, he says:

even to your old age I am he,
and to gray hairs I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear,
I will carry and will save.

The Lord through Isaiah sketches an image here that startles us again.

When our kids were little enough that we could hold them, sometimes only Mommy would do. But there comes a time in a child’s life when they are too physically big for Mommy or Daddy to carry them. This picture, though, shows God carrying his children until they are old and gray. Which means kids in Christ from 1 to 92 are being carried by God like your momma used to hold you when you were a baby.

Years ago, I had to run out to pick up some stuff from the grocery store one evening so Laura wouldn’t have to. She was getting the kids to bed, and I got home and they were both asleep. She said, “I rocked our little boy to sleep. And I just kept rocking him, because it was such a sweet moment.” Scripture says, “Christian, God holds you and tenderly carries you, even when you’ve long grown beyond the reach of your earthly mother or father’s arms.” As a mother tenderly cares for her nursing child, God cares for his children.

God protects us too. Like a woman in labor will scream, Scripture says the Lord says, “Now I will cry out like a woman in labor; I will gasp and pant” (Isaiah 42:14). And again, “I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will tear open their breast and there I will devour them like a lion, as a wild beast would rip them open” (Hosea 13:8). Think of the angriest, most protective momma in humanity or in nature, and God ferociously protects his children like that. “Jesus Christ…will sustain you to the end, guiltless...” (1 Corinthians 1:8).

A few years ago, basketball star Kevin Durant won the award for the Most Valuable Player. In his MVP speech, he movingly honored his mom, talking about how she would feed him and his brother, even if meant that she didn’t have anything to eat. The climactic moment came when he said to her from the podium, “You’re the real MVP.” It was a beautiful moment, and the video clips from the speech spread virally across social media.

Such is the power of the love of a mother in caring for her children. The best moms—and there are many—and the way they never stop loving us and caring for us—point us to Our Father in Heaven, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and Our Comforter the Holy Spirit. He has given us life and he sustains our life.

Happy Mother’s Day.