As we come to this Day in the Midst of our Easter Joy we pause to remember and to celebrate motherhood. This is truly a day remembering how we experience the love of our mothers. There are probably many memories that run through our minds and thoughts as we think of our mother both living and deceased. We will probably find ourselves this weekend doing just that. For me I remember both the good memories and not so good ones. I often will laugh when I can only recall getting one spanking from my mother as a child for something really stupid that I did to my little sister. Looking back we laugh and say, “boy I really deserved that one”. But most often we remember the special ways our mothers did things for us and for our families. This week end spend time remembering the great love of our mothers.

The scriptures today center on love. And we see it’s origin rooted in the love that God has for us. We turn to the scriptures to see that great love at work. Let’s first look at 1John4:7. The Apostle John writes,

” Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.

We see in this teaching of John that we are called to be first and foremost persons of love. This call to love is due to God’s love for us. To be loving we must first know and understand what love is and how it is lived. When a mother responds to her natural way of loving it begins even before the child is born. From the womb the mother is already caring, preparing and seeking to offer the child a loving future filled with hope. It is joy that a mother experience as she loving nurtures the child in the womb.

Isaiah 49:15 Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!

You see this is where the human person first experiences love, not knowing of the God who created her, unaware of the mother who is loving him, the child is growing and becoming through love. This is the profound nature of God’s loving plan for all of humanity. “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us“. It is here that the mother imparts and shares what she too has experienced, but the starting point is God’s love, for God loved us first. God loves has the power to bring a deep sense of Joy into our lives. It is here that for me the remembering of my mother’s love moves me to great joy. Because her love filled us and our home with joy. She was the Joy of all of our lives because of the love that she shared coming through her from God. What a gift God gives us to know His love through the love of our mothers.

We are called to love as God loves, that is unconditionally. When a mother is truly loving she is loving from this place of love. Jesus is giving the commandment to love teaches us that first we must “love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This is where to power to transform our lives and the lives of those that we can encounter comes from. The ability to see in each person God’s love and to love them unconditionally.

When we see others as different and less than us we have started down the road moving away from God’s love. When we see one based upon the color of the their skin, we move away from love. When we here someone speaking another language and we start down that path, “their in America, they need to speak English” and we fail the meet the immigrant and the stranger where they are not where we think they ought to be we’ve moved away from love. When we seek instead of passing laws and working for the good of All, and seeing in our role a call to love all and the common good, but instead, we seek to deny other’s there rights, we move away from love. The next time we find ourselves in a situation with another we call different, or not belonging, ask yourself. Is what I am thinking, preparing to do or say loving?

To many have tossed love outside and forgotten that all human beings are deserving of this love. That Jesus laid down his life for us out of love and each of us has the responsibility to respond in love. Love isn’t always easy, it isn’t always nice, some times it requires tough love. But love does require an unconditional regard for the other that sees and recognizes the dignity they posses.

Happy Mother’s Day to our Mother and live in the power of God’s Love!