A four-year-old and a six-year-old presented their Mom with a house plant. They had used their own money and she was thrilled. The older of them said with a sad face, There was a bouquet that we wanted to give you at the flower shop. It was real pretty, but it was too expensive. It had a ribbon on it that said, ’Rest In Peace’, and we thought it would be just perfect since you are always asking for a little peace so that you can rest.
Illustration
On this day that we honor mothers, its good for us to think about how much you
really do. Being a mother is not a walk in the park…
By the time a child reaches 18, a mother has had to handle some extra 18,000
hours of child-generated work. In fact, women who never have children enjoy the
equivalent of an extra three months a year in leisure time!
Moses mother was the strongest human influence in the life of Moses. He was
able to fulfill his call because he had a mother that didn’t gave up on him.
Illustration
A young father was trying to explain the concept of marriage to his 4-year-old
daughter. He got out their wedding album, thinking visual images would help,
and explained the entire wedding service to her. When he was finished, he asked
if she had any questions. She pointed to a picture of the wedding party and
asked, “Daddy, is that when mommy came to work for us?
Illustration
A teacher gave her class of second graders a lesson on the Magnet and what it
does. The next day in a written test, she included this question: My full name
has six letters. The first one is M. I pick up things. What am I? When the test
papers were turned in, the teacher was astonished to find that almost 50
percent of the students answered the question with the word Mother.
FAMILIES PASS ON FAITH
Source: James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited p. 194.
May I share with you some reasons why I believe? All good reasons, none of them the really real reason. There’s my family. I believe because I was brought up in a believing family. I don’t make any bones about that. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I had been born in the depths of Manchuria of a Chinese family. I just don’t know. I do know that I was led to believe in the love of God as soon as I learned I should eat my oatmeal. We did a lot of believing in our house. We didn’t have much else to do, as a matter of fact. Other kids sang “Jesus loves me this I know ’cause the Bible tells me so.” I sang, ‘Jesus loves me this I know, ’cause my ma told me so.”
I wasn’t alone. You probably heard about a reporter asking the great German theologian, Karl Barth, toward the end of his career: “Sir, you’ve written these great volumes about God, great learned tomes about all the difficult problems of God. How do you know they’re all true?” And the great theologian smiled and said, “‘Cause my mother said so!”
Families are God’s primary missionary society.
Lewis Smedes, Fuller Theological Seminary
Erma Bombeck (in one of her final columns):
The easiest part of being a mother is giving birth; the hardest part is showing up for it every day.
This is traditionally the day when children give something back to their mothers for all the spit they produce to wash dirty faces, all the old gum their mothers held in their hands, all the noses and fannies that were wiped, all the bloodied knees that were made well with a kiss. This is the day mothers are rewarded for washing all those sheets in the middle of the night, driving kids to school when they missed the bus, enduring all the football games in the rain. It’s appreciation day for making them finish something, for not believing them when they said, “I hate you,” and for sharing their good times and their bad times. Their cards probably won’t reflect it but what they’re really trying to say is, “Thank you for showing up.”
Major Influences in Timothy’s Life:
1. Paul’s Friendship
2. The Gift of the Holy Spirit
The gift that came with the laying on of hands
3. The Sincere Faith of his Mother, Eunice, and Grandmother, Lois
YOU KNOW YOU’RE A MOTHER WHEN…
You Know You’re A Mother When…
1. You count the sprinkles on each kid’s cupcake to make sure they’re equal.
2. You have time to shave only one leg at a time.
3. You hide in the bathroom to be alone.
4. Your kid throws-up and you catch it.
5. Someone else’s kid throws up at a party. You keep eating.
6. ?
7. As you cling to the high moral ground on toy weapons; your child chews his toast into the shape of a gun.
8. You hope ketchup is a vegetable, since it’s the only one your child eats.
9. You find yourself cutting your husband’s sandwiches into cute shapes.
10. You hear your mother’s voice coming out of your mouth when you say, “NOT in your good clothes!”
11. You stop criticizing the way your mother raised you.
12. You donate to charities in the hope that your child won’t get that disease.
13. You hire a sitter because you haven’t been out with your husband in ages, then spend half the night checking on the kids.
14. You use your own saliva to clean your child’s face.
15. You say at least once a day, “I’m not cut out for this job”, but you know you wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
___________________________
SACRIFICIAL LOVE
Psalm 51:1-12; John 3:16; John 12:20-33; Romans 8:38-39
Atonement; Children; Christ, cross of; Christ, death of; Christ, Lamb of God; Christ, substitute for humanity; Cross; Devotion; Love; Motherhood; Mothers; Salvation, gift of; Parenting; Protection; Sacrifice
On August 16, 1987, Northwest Airlines flight 225 crashed just after taking off from the Detroit airport, killing 155 people. One survived: a four-year-old from Tempe, Arizona, named Cecelia.
News accounts say when rescuers found Cecelia they did not believe she had been on the plane. Investigators first assumed Cecelia had been a passenger in one of the cars on the highway onto which the airliner crashed. But when the passenger register for the flight was checked, there was Cecelia’s name.
Cecelia survived because, even as the plane was falling, Cecelia’s mother, Paula Chican, unbuckled her own seat belt, got down on her knees in front of her daughter, wrapped her arms and body around Cecelia, and then would not let her go.
Nothing could separate that child from her parent’s love—neither tragedy nor disaster, neither the fall nor the flames that followed, neither height nor depth, neither life nor death.
Such is the love of our Savior for us. He left heaven, lowered himself to us, and covered us with the sacrifice of his own body to save us.
Citation: Bryan Chapell, In the Grip of Grace (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992)
THE IMAGES OF MOTHER
4 years old: My Mommy can do anything!
8 years old: My Mom knows a lot! A whole lot!
12 years old: My Mother doesn’t really know quite everything.
14 years old: Naturally, Mother doesn’t know that, either.
16 years old: Mother? She’s hopelessly old-fashioned.
18 years old: That old woman? She’s way out of date!
25 years old: Well, she might know a little bit about it.
35 years old: Before we decide, let’s get Mom’s opinion.
45 years old: Wonder what Mom would have thought about it?
65 years old: Wish I could talk it over with Mom
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mikey’s Thot for the Day:
Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.
— Dave Barry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mikey’s Thot for the Day:
Opportunity knocked at my door, but I was at the pier waiting for my ship to come in.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BAD GIRL
One day a little girl was sitting and watching her mother do the dishes at the kitchen sink. She suddenly noticed that her mother had several strands of white hair sticking out, in contrast on her brunette head.
She looked at her mother and inquisitively asked, “Mommy, why are some of your hairs white?”
Her mother replied, “Well, every time you do something wrong and make me cry or unhappy, one of my hairs turns white.”
The little girl was silent for a while, and then said, “Poor Grandma. You must have been a very, very bad girl.”