Take care of your mother

Another Mother’s Day approaches, and as is the norm, on Sunday morning, my father will step behind a pulpit in Tennessee to preach to the good folks at New Testament Baptist Church. In their small block building, nestled between two mountains near Bristol Motor Speedway, a number of people (hopefully including my mother) will sit anxiously awaiting my father’s morning message. I say “hopefully” my mother will be there because as she continues to weaken from her battle with cancer and the long-term side effects of chemo, she is not able to attend church as often as she’d like.

At roughly the same time this Sunday morning, 393 miles south, I will take my place behind the pulpit here in Perry. With God’s help, I intend to stand and proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ to the gracious folks at Memorial Heights Baptist Church, while my wife faithfully sits on the second row of pews to my right. While we gather here, my wife’s family will assemble for worship some 378 miles away in North Carolina. I know this exact mileage, because we have driven it often.

I realize that the ministry is not the only career (if it can be rightly called that) that forces families to spread out from one state (or country) to another. For example, this Mother’s Day, there will be countless young men and women serving our country in the military who will be separated from their families. Such is the sacrifice that mothers and fathers and sons and daughters endure, to make this great nation what it is. While I am confident it was God that led us here, and while we now call middle Georgia home … still, it was still difficult for my wife and daughters to leave behind everything and everyone they have ever known, and move to a place completely unfamiliar to them.

My children miss their grandparents (their Papa and Memaw and Grandpa and Granny-bird, as they call them). My wife misses her parents and her siblings. And frankly … this son misses his mother. Perhaps some macho man will read this and think it laughable that a six-foot-one, 275-pound, nearly 50-year-old man would say that; but it’s true. I miss my mother … and my father. I miss Sunday lunches at their house. I miss being able to drive 10 minutes across town and be there. I miss sitting down with my father and talking at length about the ministry. I miss listening to my mother sing as she busies herself serving everyone. It grieves me that I can’t be there more to help look after them.

Yes, thankfully, it is true that we live in a technological age where communication is fast and convenient. But “Facetime” and Skype are not the same as actually being there in person. Anyone who has been separated from their family knows this to be true. There is no true substitute for being together. My wife and I are blessed to still have both our parents alive, but we are also saddened that we live so far away and don’t get to visit as often as we’d like.

Further yet, ask anyone whose parents aren’t around any longer, and they can tell you about the painful void it leaves. Hence, I encourage the readers of this article; if your parents or grandparents are still alive and live close enough you can easily visit them; go do it. Don’t take them for granted. Do what you can to be an encouragement and blessing to your folks. Yes maybe, they weren’t the perfect parents, but you aren’t either. Go call on them. Go help in the yard. Go make sure their bills are being paid. Value the time you have and you will never be sorry you did. If your mother attends church, go sit beside her this Mother’s Day. I promise you, there is nothing that would make her any happier. You have a God-given obligation to honor your father and mother. I cannot conclude this article without pointing you toward a striking vivid example of this. Even in death, Jesus sought to honor His mother.

For those who value the Scriptures, there is an incredibly interesting event that took place between Jesus and His mother, Mary. In the final moments of His life, even as Jesus was being crucified, He was concerned for His mother. Most Bible scholars agree that Joseph (Mary’s husband and the step-father of Jesus) had died some years earlier. While we cannot say this with certainty, it certainly fits the Biblical narrative. Regardless, Jesus, struggling to breath as He hung nailed to a Roman cross, wanted to be sure His mother would be taken care of in His absence.

Think about this … stripped of His clothing and hanging there in insufferable pain and an open shame before the world, this loving Son was concerned about His mother. In John 19 we read these words: “When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home. Obviously, Jesus could see the heart-rending misery on His mother’s face as she watched her Son suffering in such a horrific way. So, to be certain Mary would be tended to, Jesus entrusted her safekeeping to one of His own disciples. From that day on, at the Savior’s request, John treated Mary just like she was his own mother.

Just like any other loving son, Jesus wanted to make sure the woman who had loved Him, nursed Him, and tended to Him in His youth, was going to be taken care of in her old age. Interesting indeed that the Divine Son, God robed in human flesh, wanted to make sure His “momma” was looked after. What an incredible lesson we learn about the matchless love of Jesus in not only dying for the sins of His people and rising again, but also doing something as lovingly thoughtful as making sure that His mother would be given comfort and shelter in the days ahead.

Go thou and do likewise.

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