Atlanta Bible Baptist Church

Guest (Male): Good morning. Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers and mothers-to-be and queens. It's a privilege to be able to look into the Word of God. For the scripture reading this morning, would you please stand for the reading of the scripture?

Scripture reading will be found in Psalm 127. Psalm 127. And the Word of God reads, "Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows; for so He gives His beloved sleep.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed, but shall speak with their enemies in the gate." Thank you.

Pastor Ray P. Smith: Amen. Amen. Well, Pastor Addison said something before. He said, "I will be brief." How did it go? I forget. "I'll get up, I'll be brief, then I'll be gone." I lost the third one, but it is my goal to be brief today. As incredulous as that sounds to some of you, that I trust will be the case this morning.

You may look at that title and say, "The Tears Of A Mother." Well, what's that about? Mothers do shed a lot of tears. I was thinking about that all this week as I thought about the people in our midst, our membership, and as I pray for you and think about the things that you go through. I thought this was an appropriate title and theme to work through.

There is a verse in Psalm 56. I'm not going to actually preach on the verse, but it says this: "You number my wanderings; You put my tears in Your bottle; are they not in Your book? When I cry out to You, then my enemies will turn back; this I know, because God is for me." The fact that God keeps our tears and they are precious to Him. No one sheds more tears, I think, than a mother. We're going to talk about that. I want to just mention five examples in scripture and then we'll be done.

Father, thank you so much again for this day. Thank you for your goodness. Thank you for your Word and I thank you for the way in which your Spirit uses your Word to minister to our hearts. I thank you for the Lord Jesus who made possible a relationship with you where we become children of God by faith in Jesus Christ. Thank you that we can call you Father and thank you that that relationship is an eternal one.

Father, thank you for your gifts to us, the greatest of which in this life is our mother. As we think about them today and look for ways to honor them, I ask that your Spirit might speak to our hearts. I ask, Father, that as we sit at your feet, you might be pleased to show us a little bit more of how to honor them. I pray your blessings upon the mothers here today and those under the sound of my voice. I pray that by your Spirit, you would comfort, encourage, strengthen, and bless them today.

As we always ask, we bind the evil one, that nothing said or done the next few minutes will be precipitated by him, but that he be shut up and shut out. Father, only you will be seen and heard and glorified. We'll be careful, as we always say, to give you the praise and the honor and the thanksgiving. We ask all of these things in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen.

Someone wrote: Mother's Day is traditionally the day when children give something back to their mothers for all the spit they produced to wash dirty faces, all the old gum they held in their hands, all the noses they wiped, and all the bloody knees they made well with their kisses. This is a day mothers are rewarded for washing sheets in the middle of the night, driving kids to school when they missed the bus, and enduring all those football and soccer games in the rain. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

It's a day of appreciation for making your children finish something they said they couldn't do, not believing them when they said, "I hate you," and sharing their good times as well as their bad. Today we honor the quiet heroes. They don't possess superhuman strength like the Avengers, but they've done more than anyone else to save humanity from certain disaster. They are mothers.

Mothers have made an enduring mark on us, no matter how much we try to deny it. I think about my own mom and all the things that I did. In my opinion, I was nothing less than a perfect child. But when she came to visit us, she had the audacity to stand in front of our children and as I complained about them, she said in front of them, "Son, you were worse than they were." I've since forgiven her for that.

But I know that I have my mom's personality, her easygoing, laid-back, never get too excited about many things. Sometimes I do cry in the pulpit, but other than that, I have my mom's compassion and I have her patience. I'm grateful for all that she has given me. I want to talk this morning about the sorrows that come with motherhood so that we can think in terms of appreciation for our moms.

I love reading Ann Landers' little writing from many years ago. She entitled it, "The Pay is Terrible, but Mothering Offers Great Fringe Benefits." She has a job position: mother. The job description goes like this: Long-term player needed for challenging, permanent work in chaotic environment. Candidates must possess excellent communication and organizational skills and be willing to work evenings and weekends and frequent 24-hour shifts. There is some overnight travel required, including trips to primitive camping sites on rainy weekends and endless sports tournaments in faraway cities. Travel expenses not reimbursed.

The responsibilities: They must keep this job for the rest of their life. Must be willing to be hated, at least temporarily. Must possess the physical stamina of a pack mule. Must be willing to tackle stimulating technical challenges, such as small gadget repair, sluggish toilets, and stuck zippers. Must handle assembly and product safety testing as well as floor maintenance and janitorial work. Must screen phone calls, maintain calendars, and coordinate production of multiple homework projects.

Must have ability to plan and organize social gatherings for clients of all ages and levels of mentality. Must be willing to be indispensable one minute and an embarrassment the next. Must assume final complete accountability for the quality of the end project. In terms of advancement and promotion, there is no possibility of either. Your job is to remain in the same position for years without complaining, constantly retraining and updating your skills so that those in your charge can ultimately surpass you.

Previous experience: None is required, but on-the-job training is offered on a continually exhausting basis. The wages: None. In fact, you must pay those in your charge, offering frequent raises and bonuses. A balloon payment is due when they turn 18 and attend college. When you die, you give them whatever income you have left. The benefits: There's no health or dental insurance, no pension, no tuition reimbursement, no paid holidays, no stock options. However, the job offers limitless opportunities for personal growth and free hugs for life.

Moms put up with a lot. As I was thinking about this particular day and thinking about motherhood, the tears of a mother, I thought of five different examples. I put down ten verses. We won't look at all ten of them, but the examples I want to talk about, why moms shed their tears, are some of the things we can learn from those. First of all, a mother often sheds tears for the unborn child. The unborn child.

There are some people who, try as they might, have not been able to have their own biological children. I remember when my wife and I first were married. We said we would go two years and then we would start a family. Then after three years, we would try and start a family. Then after four years, finally, we figured out what we were supposed to do. The Lord blessed us with children and then when he started, we had to actually pray that he would stop. No, that's not true. But we had our own bouts.

Some have had miscarriages. Some have found that they have multiple miscarriages. Some have found that they were not ever able to have their own children. One of the ladies in our church back in Michigan, she did a little thing during one of our small group sessions where you do a timeline and you talk about the highs and lows in your life. One of the lows that she pointed out was when she was in her 30s, she had to have a medical procedure and she realized after that that she would never be able to have children.

So, for some women, Mother's Day is a torturous day. In fact, that lady never ever came to service on Mother's Day because it was too painful for her. There are women in the scripture who could not have children and we need to be at least a little more sensitive and aware of that. Genesis 16:1 says, "Sarah, Abraham's wife, had borne him no children." That was a shameful thing in those days because every woman wanted to be able to bear children. Even today, some feel that they are less than a woman if they're not able to have children, even though that is not true.

Sarah had borne Abraham no children. She had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar. So Sarah said to Abraham, her husband, "Now the Lord has prevented me from bearing children." I highlighted that statement because I want us to think about the fact that children do come from the Lord. The scripture says, "Children are a gift from God, they're a blessing from God."

Even during the years when my wife and I thought that children might be a bit of a challenge, there was the doctor who said, "There are procedures that we can try." And I said, "No, I don't want to try a procedure. God is the one who gives children. We're going to ask God to give us children. We don't want to be able to say, 'Well, we had the child because we did this procedure.' We wanted to be able to say God gave us children." So I said no to that. We're going to pray and ask God to give us children. By His grace, He mercied us and, in fact, He did.

But in this particular instance, Sarah said, "Well, I've come up with a plan. You can take my maid and then you can impregnate her. If she has the baby and the baby is born into my knees, legally the child is mine." She thought, "Maybe that's what God wants." Of course, you know the story, that's what they did. Verse 4 says, "When she saw," that is Hagar the handmaid, "when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her sight." Then Sarah got an attitude against her husband, the one that she suggested be a part of this.

She said, "May the wrong done to me be upon you. I gave my maid into your arms, but now when she saw that she's conceived, I was despised in her sight. May the Lord judge between you and me." One of the pastors when we were in seminary used to do Q&A from the pulpit on Sunday evenings. Brave man that he was. One of the ladies asked him one time, "Well, what did the Bible say about surrogate parenthood?" He said, "Well, I never thought about that. I don't know."

I said to him, "Well, there's an example of that in Genesis 16 and it didn't turn out too well." When the woman realized that she was pregnant, it was her child. It wasn't her mistress's child. She despised her mistress. She wanted to keep the child. Of course, some of you know that there have been instances where there have been children promised to an aspiring couple only to have the mother change her mind after nine months of carrying the child. There's a bonding that takes place and there are all kinds of struggles.

In 1 Samuel 1, I mentioned Hannah. It says there was a certain man, skipping the rest of that in verse 1, he had two wives. The name of the one was Hannah, the other was Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. When the day came that Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and her daughters. Her quiver was full. But to Hannah, he would give a double portion, for he loved Hannah, but it says the Lord had closed her womb. Who's responsible for children coming or not coming? Well, God is.

Verse 6: Her rival, however, would provoke her bitterly to irritate her because the Lord had closed her womb. Sometimes you have these rivals and they're insensitive in the things that they say. I put that verse down because I just want to say to us, sometimes we ought to be a little more sensitive. You shouldn't say to someone something like, "Y'all been married a while, you ain't got no kids yet?" That can be really injurious because they're trying to have children.

But that comes from God and we want to be sensitive to them and a little more cautious in how we speak. We ought not to make it seem like, "Well, it's normal for you to have kids, you should have had some by now. What's wrong with you?" But that's what they hear when we ask them about that. We need to be a little more sensitive about that. There were tears shed for the unborn child.

Secondly, there are tears shed for the deceased child. The deceased child. I know I put Bathsheba, and you say, "Wait a minute, she shouldn't have been having no kids." But she did have a son. Of course, the Lord punished David because what he did in getting a son was not right before God. But I put down Bathsheba and Naomi. They are women who had children, but the children were killed.

2 Samuel 12 says this: David says to Nathan after Nathan confronts him, "I've sinned against the Lord." Nathan said to David, "The Lord also has put away your sin. You shall not die. However, because by this deed you've given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die." So the child died. Then Nathan departed to his house.

You say, "Man alive, it wasn't the child's fault that he was born." No, but God in His sovereignty decided that, "David, I'm going to take this child from you because you never should have done what you did." God hates sin, and God punishes sin. However, in the goodness of God—and you may not see this as a good thing, and you can hate me for it later—but I think about them and I say, "This is a good thing from the Lord that He did."

Number one, He took this child's life. Why was that a good thing? Because can you imagine David the king as he watches this kid grow up? It is a daily, constant reminder of his sin against God. As the child gets older and people whisper, then all of that is eliminated because God took the child graciously early on. Then God, in His favor, because Bathsheba, she loses the child—and of course, she carried that child—there's grief for her.

But you know what God does? God replaces him with another son. In fact, the scripture says that David comforted his wife and God gave her a son and it says the Lord loved him. God loved Solomon. In fact, God brought Solomon up to the position of making him David's replacement in Israel. So God in His favor did that. He's a good God. He's a gracious God. He's a loving God.

We see an example in Ruth 1 where it says, "It came about in the days when the judges governed, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the land of Moab with his wife and his two sons. This man's name was Elimelech, and his wife's name was Naomi. But Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died. She was left with her two sons. Then they took for themselves Moabite women as wives.

The name of the one was Orpah, the name of the other was Ruth. Everybody knows about Ruth. And they lived there about ten years. Then both Mahlon and Chilion also died. The woman was bereft of her two children and her husband." She lost her two children. The pain of losing your sons was a torturous thing to her. In fact, when she went back to Bethlehem, they saw her coming and they said, "Is this Naomi?" Naomi, the name means pleasant.

But she said, "Don't call me Naomi. Call me Mara." The word Mara means bitter. Because she said, "The Almighty has dealt bitterly with me. He took my two sons and my daughter." There are women who suffer the loss of their children and they never get over it. Ask any mother—I mean, I won't say ask the mother, but you've heard stories of women sitting in their home and some crazy drive-by shooter shoots into the house, child gone.

What did the child do? What did the parent do? Nothing. And it's a senseless thing. How do you stand there at the funeral grieving the loss of a child who did not deserve to die and had done nothing to die? See? And those are tears shed and every Mother's Day, what did Mom think about? She remembers the child who was taken from her. So, we want to be a little more sensitive about people who have lost their children.

I know a woman who I worked with her. I worked at a store called Rae & Derrick. I have no relation, I got no money from the name. But I worked there and I worked with a lady and she was a Catholic woman. But then she said to me, "I haven't been to church, I haven't been to mass since my child died." Really? She said, "My child was nine years old. She developed brain cancer and she died." And she said, "I haven't spoken to God since. I've not been back to church since."

See, she's so bitter against God that she's not even able to look to Him, to worship Him, to seek His strength. There are people all right around you who are grieving the loss of a child and we want to be sensitive. "Well, you know, it's been years." They'll never get over that. My wife reminds me sometimes of individuals. I've seen them, this happened mostly in Michigan.

She said, "Well, you know, this is the anniversary of the death of a brother or a child." She'll remember the incident. And the grief is so overwhelming that they found that they could not worship or they chose not to. Those things happen. Mothers shed tears over their deceased children.

A third one, mothers shed tears over fighting children. One of the things my mom said to me years ago when she was still alive, she said to me, "You know, there are—I have six siblings, three of each." And my mom said to me, "I thought my children would always be close." That meant a lot to her to have children who were close to each other, children that talked to each other, children that are kind and thoughtful to each other.

In fact, I put that up there because I want to be able to say to you, one of the ways you can really bless Mom is to get along with your siblings. You can't be harboring bitterness and anger and resentment because your mom feels that because they're her child, too, not just you. Genesis 25, it says Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was barren and the Lord answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived. I highlighted that because that's our story.

But the children struggled together within her. It's bad when the kids are fighting in the womb. And of course, you know when they got out of the womb, Esau and Jacob, they didn't get along too well. In fact, Esau's grandson Amalek, he was one of the ones who terrorized Israel as they were coming out of Egyptian bondage. He never really forgave his brother for what he did.

The children struggled together within her. And she said, "If this is so, then why am I this way?" And so she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her, "Two nations are in your womb. Two peoples will be separated from your body. And one shall be stronger than the other. The older shall serve the younger." They're fighting now because it's a prelude they're going to be fighting later too.

I really want to learn, in fact, I was talking to one of the individuals I'm going through premarital counseling sessions now and I was sharing with the fiancee, the girl. It takes me a minute to get my words right. But I was saying to her, she was thinking about some of the upbringing, some of the struggles, and what I was doing to say, "Well, have you ever considered," and she highlighted some things in her life as I did a family history analysis.

I said, "Look, you circle the very things that, you know, you care and you go out of your way to make sure that you don't put people out, you're sensitive." And I said, "How much of that was a result of the way you came up?" Without the family that God gave you, you don't develop those kinds of habit patterns and behaviors.

The principal of the school that our kids attended, one of the children was a special needs child. And of course, they had four, five others. But he was telling me one day as we were lunch, he said, "You know, when my wife was pregnant with her, the doctors always advised abort the child. This is a matter of sympathy." We said, "No, it's murder. We're not going to do that."

But then he says, "There's been because of her presence in our home, our kids, each of them, they have this sympathy and this softness, this kindness and patience with people that they learned because of their sister. If their sister isn't there, maybe they don't learn all of that." I say all of that just to say, listen, God put you in the family He wanted you to be in. He put the siblings in the family He wanted you to have.

Now, you may not be happy about His choice of siblings, but you learn something from those siblings that you wouldn't have learned any other way. And God knew that. So you want to bless your siblings and you want to be kind to your siblings to honor your mom in that way.

Number four is the suffering child, the suffering child. I put down the Syrophoenician woman and then I put down Mary because I wanted to do two for each one. But I mentioned the lady who stopped attending because her child developed the brain cancer and died. She would be an example of that. This is someone that she thought God should do something that she wanted Him to do and He chose not to do the thing that she wanted.

Sometimes God says yes, sometimes He says no. And we have to just leave it in His hands. Obviously, we can't do anything about it. But the Lord is, the scripture says He's a merciful God. He's a loving God. He's a good God. And we see His goodness and then we think, "Well, I expect Him to do this." And then when He doesn't do that, we say, "Well, He's not so good after all."

But is He only good if He does exactly what you want? No. He's good all the time and He has a purpose for everything that He allows. One of the interesting case in points was Hezekiah. Hezekiah was going to die and God sent Isaiah to him and said, "Hezekiah, put your house in order because you're going to die." And instead of putting his house in order, he goes to his room crying, "Lord, I've been really good. I've been a good king and I haven't been a thief, I haven't been injurious."

He's going on and on and on and he's not happy about the fact that God is going to cut his life short. So God says, "All right, Isaiah, go back and tell him I'm going to give you 15 more years." God gives Hezekiah 15 more years and somewhere in the midst of those 15 years he has a son, Manasseh. The scripture says that Manasseh was the worst king in the history of the nation. If he had just gone ahead and died—that sounds harsh.

Sometimes God, He will spare the nation. But oh no, you want your way. Sometimes you should hope that God doesn't give you what you want because what you want might not be what you need. And it may not be what anybody else wants or needs either. You just have to trust the Lord. But when a mother has a suffering child, then she'll do anything for that child.

The Syrophoenician woman, it says in Matthew 15, Jesus was going, He withdrew from the district into the district of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out saying, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David. My daughter is cruelly demon-possessed." But He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and implored Him saying, "Send her away, she keeps shouting at us. She's a pest. Get rid of her."

But He answered her. He said, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Verse 25 says, but she came and began to bow down before Him saying, "Lord, help me." He answered and said, "It's not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." Now some of us would say, "But you called me a dog?" and we would have walked away. But not this woman, because this is her child.

She said, "Yes, Lord, but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from the master's table." She said, "I'm not asking for the meal. I'll just take the crumbs. I just need you to help me." So she didn't walk in pride. She didn't stiffen up and say, "You can't be calling me no dog!" because she'll do anything. She'll take any insult because this is her daughter.

Jesus said to her, "O woman, your faith is great. It shall be done for you as you wish." And the daughter was healed at once because she humbled herself. One of the things that I know about moms is they'll do anything. Like the kid who was at school, the teacher put a math problem up. She says, "Okay, now if there's one pie and there's ten in the family, how much does each person get?" And the boy says, "One-ninth."

She said, "Well, let's try this again. There's ten people there and one pie. How much part does each one get? We're talking fractions here." And he says, "Fractions, yes. One-ninth." She said, "Obviously you don't know fractions." He said, "No, you don't know my mom. Because if there's ten of us and one pie, my mom will say she don't need any. She'll give up her portion so that everybody else can have some." That's what a mom does.

Luke 2: Jesus' parents were amazed at the things that were being said about Him when they took Him to the temple. Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, the baby's mother, "This child is destined to cause many in Israel to fall and many others to rise. He has been sent as a sign from God, but many will oppose Him. As a result, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed, and a sword will pierce your very soul."

I highlighted that. You know, we don't always think about that. If you're Mary and you bore this perfect son and he's never done anything to anybody, he's always been a blessing. He's healed, he's fed, he's taught. And because the leaders were jealous of Him and they were rude to Him, lied on Him and conspired to have Him put to death. And she has to see this. She has to hear this.

She has to see her son lifted up naked and crucified on a cross. The one that she bore. That's the sword piercing her soul. This is what he said she's going to have to face. Mothers, they can face some torturous things. And of course, we praise God for the fact that they forgive us because some of those torturous things came at our hands. Sometimes we say some things to Mom. Sometimes we're insensitive to Mom. Sometimes we're injurious to Mom.

I was telling my wife, this wasn't murder injurious, but when I was living at home, my mom said to me, "Ray, I'd like to build up my vocabulary." And she said, "I saw this little book and it's just a little book of words, like a thesaurus. Could you get me that book?" because I worked at Rich's downtown in the book department. And she says, "Could you bring me home one of those books? I'll pay for it."

And I said, "Okay." And of course, there's no Velcro up here, nothing sticks. And of course, I forgot. And then she mentioned it again. And I forgot. She mentioned it one more again. And I forgot. And one day I came home and she had her own little book. She had gone and purchased it herself. And she just gave me the look. That look that just strikes at the heart.

But things that you could have done, you should have done, you look back and you say, "Why did I not?" but you didn't. And you can't undo those things. Can't tell you the number of times my mom called me up on the phone. They lived here in Georgia and we lived in Michigan. And she would call me up and she'd say, "Hi, I'm just calling to let you know I'm still alive." Like, "Oh, okay. I'm sorry. You're right. I'll call you more often." Don't ask me how often I did.

Number five is the straying child, the straying child. Of course, this one really strikes at my heart. I put down Eve. Now the prodigal son's mom, there is no prodigal son's mom in scripture. Don't look for it, you won't find it there. But I wanted to have two of each. Anyway, I put down Eve. And you know the story in Genesis 4. Cain and Abel grew up.

When they grew up, Abel became a shepherd and Cain cultivated the ground. When it came time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. Abel also brought a gift, the best portions of the firstborn lambs from his flock. The Lord accepted Abel and his gift, but he did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry and he looked dejected.

The Lord confronted him. "Why are you looking dejected? If you do well, you'll be accepted. If not, sin lies at the door and its desire is to have you. But you have to master it. You own the choices." Well, what did he choose? Verse 8 says, "One day Cain suggested to his brother, 'Let's go out into the fields.' And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother and he killed him."

And of course, when God asked Cain, "Where's your brother?" he said, "I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper?" And God knows everything. Of course, God judged Cain. Cain whined about the judgment and said, "That's too great for me. Everyone that sees me will want to kill me and I'll be driven from your face. I'll be driven from the face of the ground." And whine, whine, whine.

All the consequences that he didn't think about when he killed his brother. And he had to face all of those. And it says Cain, he went out from the presence of the Lord. He never returned. And you know, sometimes we have children and they just stray away. We raised them, we brought them to church. They were on drugs, right? We drug them to church.

And we made them sit in Sunday school, we made them learn all the Bible stories, we made them do the memory verses so they could go to camp for free. We made them do all these kinds of things. We poured out our life to bless our kids, to help our kids, to give our kids the best advantage. And then they get old enough to make decisions that make you shake your head.

"What do you mean you're not sure of God? What do you mean you want to try something else? What do you mean you want to pursue Islam?" And they just walk away. Some of them come back. Some of them never come back. And I mention that because here's the thing that I know about moms. Dads are like, "Stupid," and Dad's going about his business. But not Mom. Mom never gives up.

And she hurts. And somehow, Mom, she gets this root feeling that it's my fault. "What did I do? What did I not do?" and she beats herself up over and over thinking that if I had done something differently, he wouldn't have strayed, she wouldn't have gone out. But listen, they own the choices. They made the decision. You didn't make the decision. You did everything you could.

And you have to stop beating yourself up because of their decision. They own the outcomes and not you. You can't blame yourself for the outcome because you don't own the choices. Moms shed tears, though, because of their children. A mother often sheds tears for those five types of kids. We praise God for moms. But I know some of you, you're looking at that list and you say, "Yep, that was mine. Yep, yep, that one."

And they're all around us. Moms put up with a lot and they deserve all of the honor and all of the blessing that we can heap upon them for all of the tears that God has stored up in His bottle because they are precious to Him. Let me end by giving you two final thoughts. A mother is blessed by children who do two things. Number one, who appreciate her life.

I told you about the penny-pinching rich guy. They criticized him for being so stingy. He said in his defense, he said, "I couldn't stand for my mother to go on year after year working every night scrubbing and cleaning office floors. So I did something about it." "What'd you do?" "I bought the office building." And the listener said, "Well, that's great! Then what'd you do for your mom?" He said, "Well, I moved her to first shift. I mean, you know."

Hopefully you will love your mom way better than that. Not only should we appreciate her life, but we should apply her life lessons. There are many things that I learned from my mom besides how to button them straight, besides how to shine my shoes, besides how to clean behind my ears. I learned a lot of things from my mom that I take for granted. I don't even think about them, but it's because she drilled it into me.

And the things that I saw in her, the lessons I learned from her about life, the best way to honor her is to adopt the lessons and live well. I'll end with this. There was an apocryphal story. It says one day when God created mothers, He was into His sixth day of overtime when an angel appeared and said, "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one."

And the Lord said, "Have you seen the specs on this order? She has to be completely washable, but not plastic. Have 180 movable parts, all replaceable. Run on black coffee and leftovers. Have a lap that disappears when she stands up. A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair, and six pairs of hands." The angel shook his head slowly. "Six pairs of hands? No way."

"It's not the hands that are causing me the problem," said the Lord. "It's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have. One pair to see through closed doors when she asks, 'What are you kids doing in there?' when she already knows. Another in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn't but what she needs to know. And of course the ones in front that look at a child when he messes up and says, 'I understand and I love you,' without so much as uttering a word."

"I'm so close to creating something so close to myself already. I have one who heals herself when she's sick," because you know moms are not allowed to be sick when someone else in the house is sick. "And can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger. And can get a nine-year-old to stand under a shower. Not only can she think, she can reason and compromise."

Finally, the angel bent over, ran his finger across the cheek of the mother. "There's a leak," he pronounced. "I told you you were putting too much into this model." "That's not a leak," the Lord said. "It's a tear." "What is it for?" asked the angel. The Lord replied, "It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, pride." "You're a genius," shouted the angel. The Lord looked at him and said, "I didn't put it there."

Moms are caring. Moms are loving. Moms are super. Moms are great. Thank God for mothers. Father, thank you again for this day. Thank you for your love for us. Thank you for your mercies and your goodnesses. It is in your goodness that you gave us the mothers that you gave us. It is because of your great love for us that you filled their hearts with patience.

I think about all the young women who say, "I could never have kids." And you feel that way because they don't have kids and they don't need any grace to deal with kids. Oh, but once they get pregnant, you grace them with the ability to be patient and loving and kind and thoughtful and giving and sacrificing. And Father, that was our mom. Thank you so much for all they did.

We love them, we honor them. And Father, I pray that those who have moms who are still alive, may they not neglect to shower them in the greatest way with the greatest of blessings. May they not be guilty of failing to call and speak and visit and send gifts, etc. Father, may they use every opportunity that they have to bless their moms. And those of us whose moms are passed, may we honor them in the way that we live.

May we honor them by honoring you and walking in your will. Pray for any who may be in the audience who doesn't know Christ in the pardon of their sins. May they choose to show and show your love as their mom would want. Bless them today, we ask in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen.