The Honour of Motherhood

In many parts of the world today is Mother's Day.

It's the specially designated day of the year to honour mothers and motherhood.

But our world is in interesting times…..particularly in the Western World.

We want to honour motherhood but at the same time we are subtly undermining, confusing and destroying motherhood.

• Many women have believed the lie from society that true honour only comes through achieving status and accomplishing goals outside of the home.  Women want a career, and children get squeezed in around it.

• Some women have believed the lie in their own heads and not negated by society that they actually are not a woman and want their bodies to have major external intervention and change via male hormones or gender-reassignment surgery.

• Some men have believed the lie that they can have relations with each other, get a child via surrogacy and donor eggs or adoption, and deprive the child of ever having a mother at all in their lives.

• Millions of women have believed the widespread lie that its ok to kill the baby growing in their body and want to avoid motherhood altogether

• Here in our corner of the world, so many girls get pregnant out of marriage.  Many find a way to get an illegal abortion. Others take the baby back to their village to a grandma and leave the child there, depriving the child of the presence of a mother.

One of the ways I am convinced Satan destoys our world is to not only destroy the family unit structure He designed of mother, father and children together, but to destroy the identity concept of those who make up a family.  He is bent on destroying God's intended honor bestowed on the role and status of 'father' and of 'man' as well as of 'mother' and of 'woman'. Along with the creation of Adam, Eve as woman and mother of all living was part of God's foundational creation blueprint.

In our modern sin-sick Western world we are seeing Satan stealing the true honour of being a woman and of being a mother.

God gave a woman the immense privilege of the possibility of motherhood.  It is an honour that is so often taken for granted and abused, but it is an honour of immense proportions.  (In some ways this has become even more important to me in my context of us being an infertile couple and watching so many others treating the gift of motherhood with carelessness). A mother carries a child within her body for 9 months, then it is her body that births that child and then her body that sustains that child with food for many months after that and she is the primary care-giver for the child until the child leaves home. This is no small role.

A recent article at The Gospel Coalition about Ectogenesis highlighted the further possibilities, with current science, of a woman's loss of even being needed to conceive or carry a child in pregnancy or give birth at all.   This will only further undermine the honor of motherhood as the author of that articles reminds us.

Satan as the eternally shamed one, is 'hell-bent' on destoying the honour of the One who shamed him.  We know the end of the story that there is no escape from eternal punishment and shame for Satan, but he won't go quietly….he will go kicking and screaming, blaming and shaming, stealing and destroying.  He wants to shame God by destroying the honour of what God created and how he created it.  He renames his distortions with the names meant for God's original plan, and calls them 'dignity' or 'equality' or 'tolerance' or 'freedom'. But it is all designed to erode our identity and personhood and true created honour, so that we become a 'nothing'.  Satan fools the world into thinking it is gaining something greater when in fact it is losing everything it was created to be.  

The current eroding of the concept of true male and female gender as defined by how God forms us in the womb, is an attack at the very core nature of who we are and how God created us 'male and female'.   And sadly this is not only a matter impacting the Western world.  An African university student I mentor asked me last time we met 'what's the deal with this whole transgender stuff?'

On this day, lets make the most of it, and celebrate the wonderful uniqueness of womanhood, of being female, of motherhood. Let's make sure we intentionally teach it in our churches, our Sunday School classes, our homes and in every opportunity we have in our neighbourhoods and community as we chat 'over the fence' or 'over the counter'.

We honour mothers today because God first gave honour to being female and being a mother.  Let us not waver or wane in our honour of what God honours. Let us give thanks for the role and blessing of motherhood as God created it to be.

ps………..last but not least let me honour my own mother and mother-in-law today with a link to this article tribute to mothers of missionaries