“Into a Loving Partnership”
Our passage from the Prophet Isaiah this morning concludes with these words: “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.”
Those words are a reminder that even though we are used to thinking of God in mostly masculine terms, and that we worship God the Father, that God’s being encompasses the full scope of humanity. And that as fierce as a mother loves her children, as fully and unconditionally as we know a mother’s love to be – that is how fiercely and fully God loves us.
For most of us, that comparison of God’s love to a mother’s love is powerful because we’ve known a mother’s love. We have those memories of what it means to be young and vulnerable, to be hurt or scared, and to go looking for that one source of comfort and compassion that can always make things better – our mothers. And some of us are mothers, and know deeply that unique bond between yourself and the new life growing in your womb, and know the lengths you will go to to protect your child and keep them safe and shielded from harm.
This is the natural expectation of how a mother’s love works. And it’s how God’s love works. God is our source of love and comfort – God is the entity we come to, even as adults, who gives us nourishment and strength and embraces us and fills us with warmth, the way we expect a mother to.
But, of course, that isn’t the experience for all of us. Not every family lives up to that ideal. Not every relationship between mother and child is a strong as we might hope. We may be separated from our mothers by death, by distance, or by circumstance. We might not all be blessed with the mothers we’d hope for… not everyone who has a baby can give the love a child needs. Some mothers can be abusive, even to their own children. And those tears in the relationship create massive holes which can take an entire lifetime to stitch back together.
God loves us as a mother should love us. As I hope that all of our mothers do love us. But God’s love is even greater than that.
God doesn’t just raise us, nourish us, love us, and send us out into the world, but God sets us on a journey. In the previous chapter of Isaiah, in chapter 65, verse 9, the Lord says this:
“I will bring forth descendants from Jacob and from Judah who will possess my mountains; my chosen people will inherit them; and there will my servants live.”
When we look at God’s love for us, we can see it goes even beyond that of a mother for a child. Because through Isaiah we can see a progression that leads not just to love and to comfort – but to trust and responsibility as well.
“I will bring forth descendants from Jacob and from Judah who will possess my mountains;” so we see God bringing his people together.
“My chosen people will inherit them;” so God’s people are not just brought together, but chosen for a covenant and for a purpose.
“And there will my servants live.” Now… it might seem like a deterioration of the relationship to suddenly go from calling us God’s chosen people to calling us servants, but the word “servant” doesn’t really have a good English translation the way it’s meant here. The Hebrew word for servant here, abad, includes not just the serfs and slaves, but everyone bonded to a particular household.
So “servant” isn’t so much a slave or a lowly menial laborer here the way we might think it. Instead, it’s an escalation of the relationship. From simply being God’s “chosen,” the way God might choose a pet or a piece of decoration, to being Abad – God’s people bonded to God, and trusted to work in his name.
So what does it mean to worship a God who loves us as a mother, and also trusts us to work in his name?
It means that our relationship with God is incredibly strong and also unique. In just about every other culture and every other religion, God is way up there and we are way down here, and our entire existence is to keep our heads down and try not to make God angry.
But God invites us into an entirely different relationship. God invites into partnership. Since God is infinite and we are not it’s easy to get lost in our own insignificance. God is all-knowing, all-powerful, majestic, and mighty, and we’re just little ants scurrying around on the ground.
Yet, our relationship with God is also filled with love. Love as a mother – as a mother’s love should be. And also trust – God invites us into partnership for the work of his kingdom on earth.
We know that not every mother-and-child relationship is filled with the love that we would hope for. Families break down, or never get off the ground in the first place. Things happen… and many wonderful mothers or would-be mothers never get the opportunity to love.
And we also know that not every partnership works smoothly. Relationships can strain over time. People might not turn out to be quite who we thought they were, and trust, once lost, isn’t easily regained.
But we are assured of God’s love. Infinite and eternal – all-encompassing and embracing. Nourishing and unconditional – the way a mother’s love should be.
And we are assured of God’s trust. That even as we stumble and falter, that God will continually lift us up again, with his trust to carry on in his name.
It’s a wonderful one-two punch of the kind of relationship God expects of us. Love and trust.
And sometimes those two different modes of relationship can strain against each other. We fall short of God’s trust all the time – it’s part of our mortal natures. And that requires more of God’s love for compassion, forgiveness, and comfort for us.
And we fall short of the love God commands us to share – with God and each other. And that requires more of God’s trust in us, to pick us back up and lead us with renewed strength and encouragement.
God does indeed love us like a mother. But that relationship goes even deeper than the unconditional, self-sacrificial, deep bond of love, which is no small thing in itself. But God also gives us trust. God gives us responsibilities. God gives us a stake in his own kingdom – a chance to be so much greater than the mere flesh and bone of our bodies. God binds us to him and invites us to share in glory with him.
No metaphor for any human relationship can perfectly describe the relationship between us and out divine Creator. We know God loves us as a mother. We know God is our rock and our redeemer. We sing that we have a friend in Jesus. God is our healer, our great physician, our mighty fortress, our comforter.
God is perfectly all things to us in ways that no one person can be. And that can be an intimidating thought. To think that God, great and powerful, King of the Universe, wants little old us by his side. And yet that’s exactly what God desires. Because we are created out of love. Love which stays with us, which abides in us, which is perfect and free-flowing, and which gives us peace and comfort, as a mother’s love should.
Today, on Mother’s Day, we give our thanks and appreciation to our mothers and to the women in our lives who have blessed us with unconditional love, with encouragement, with comfort – the women who raised us, shaped us, and prepared us for the world. And we remember the love of our Lord, who did all those things not only with us, but with those women in our lives as well.
And so we honor and celebrate our mothers and those foundational women in our lives, the women who first showed love to each us, in the name of our Lord God, who poured all love into the world through every generation of his people.
To God be all glory, praise, and honor. Amen.
Let us pray.
Gracious God. We give you thanks today for our mothers. For the women who raised us. For grandmothers, stepmothers, godmothers, foster mothers, aunts, and sisters. We bless you for the love, for the compassion, and for the comfort they give us. For the work they put into forging strong and lasting bonds of family. And we give you our thanks for creating those bonds, as you create bonds between all people. We cannot imagine all of the ways in which you love us, support us, invite us, and guide us in our lives. And so we simply pray to you in heartfelt thanksgiving. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our passage from the Prophet Isaiah this morning concludes with these words: “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.”
Those words are a reminder that even though we are used to thinking of God in mostly masculine terms, and that we worship God the Father, that God’s being encompasses the full scope of humanity. And that as fierce as a mother loves her children, as fully and unconditionally as we know a mother’s love to be – that is how fiercely and fully God loves us.
For most of us, that comparison of God’s love to a mother’s love is powerful because we’ve known a mother’s love. We have those memories of what it means to be young and vulnerable, to be hurt or scared, and to go looking for that one source of comfort and compassion that can always make things better – our mothers. And some of us are mothers, and know deeply that unique bond between yourself and the new life growing in your womb, and know the lengths you will go to to protect your child and keep them safe and shielded from harm.
This is the natural expectation of how a mother’s love works. And it’s how God’s love works. God is our source of love and comfort – God is the entity we come to, even as adults, who gives us nourishment and strength and embraces us and fills us with warmth, the way we expect a mother to.
But, of course, that isn’t the experience for all of us. Not every family lives up to that ideal. Not every relationship between mother and child is a strong as we might hope. We may be separated from our mothers by death, by distance, or by circumstance. We might not all be blessed with the mothers we’d hope for… not everyone who has a baby can give the love a child needs. Some mothers can be abusive, even to their own children. And those tears in the relationship create massive holes which can take an entire lifetime to stitch back together.
God loves us as a mother should love us. As I hope that all of our mothers do love us. But God’s love is even greater than that.
God doesn’t just raise us, nourish us, love us, and send us out into the world, but God sets us on a journey. In the previous chapter of Isaiah, in chapter 65, verse 9, the Lord says this:
“I will bring forth descendants from Jacob and from Judah who will possess my mountains; my chosen people will inherit them; and there will my servants live.”
When we look at God’s love for us, we can see it goes even beyond that of a mother for a child. Because through Isaiah we can see a progression that leads not just to love and to comfort – but to trust and responsibility as well.
“I will bring forth descendants from Jacob and from Judah who will possess my mountains;” so we see God bringing his people together.
“My chosen people will inherit them;” so God’s people are not just brought together, but chosen for a covenant and for a purpose.
“And there will my servants live.” Now… it might seem like a deterioration of the relationship to suddenly go from calling us God’s chosen people to calling us servants, but the word “servant” doesn’t really have a good English translation the way it’s meant here. The Hebrew word for servant here, abad, includes not just the serfs and slaves, but everyone bonded to a particular household.
So “servant” isn’t so much a slave or a lowly menial laborer here the way we might think it. Instead, it’s an escalation of the relationship. From simply being God’s “chosen,” the way God might choose a pet or a piece of decoration, to being Abad – God’s people bonded to God, and trusted to work in his name.
So what does it mean to worship a God who loves us as a mother, and also trusts us to work in his name?
It means that our relationship with God is incredibly strong and also unique. In just about every other culture and every other religion, God is way up there and we are way down here, and our entire existence is to keep our heads down and try not to make God angry.
But God invites us into an entirely different relationship. God invites into partnership. Since God is infinite and we are not it’s easy to get lost in our own insignificance. God is all-knowing, all-powerful, majestic, and mighty, and we’re just little ants scurrying around on the ground.
Yet, our relationship with God is also filled with love. Love as a mother – as a mother’s love should be. And also trust – God invites us into partnership for the work of his kingdom on earth.
We know that not every mother-and-child relationship is filled with the love that we would hope for. Families break down, or never get off the ground in the first place. Things happen… and many wonderful mothers or would-be mothers never get the opportunity to love.
And we also know that not every partnership works smoothly. Relationships can strain over time. People might not turn out to be quite who we thought they were, and trust, once lost, isn’t easily regained.
But we are assured of God’s love. Infinite and eternal – all-encompassing and embracing. Nourishing and unconditional – the way a mother’s love should be.
And we are assured of God’s trust. That even as we stumble and falter, that God will continually lift us up again, with his trust to carry on in his name.
It’s a wonderful one-two punch of the kind of relationship God expects of us. Love and trust.
And sometimes those two different modes of relationship can strain against each other. We fall short of God’s trust all the time – it’s part of our mortal natures. And that requires more of God’s love for compassion, forgiveness, and comfort for us.
And we fall short of the love God commands us to share – with God and each other. And that requires more of God’s trust in us, to pick us back up and lead us with renewed strength and encouragement.
God does indeed love us like a mother. But that relationship goes even deeper than the unconditional, self-sacrificial, deep bond of love, which is no small thing in itself. But God also gives us trust. God gives us responsibilities. God gives us a stake in his own kingdom – a chance to be so much greater than the mere flesh and bone of our bodies. God binds us to him and invites us to share in glory with him.
No metaphor for any human relationship can perfectly describe the relationship between us and out divine Creator. We know God loves us as a mother. We know God is our rock and our redeemer. We sing that we have a friend in Jesus. God is our healer, our great physician, our mighty fortress, our comforter.
God is perfectly all things to us in ways that no one person can be. And that can be an intimidating thought. To think that God, great and powerful, King of the Universe, wants little old us by his side. And yet that’s exactly what God desires. Because we are created out of love. Love which stays with us, which abides in us, which is perfect and free-flowing, and which gives us peace and comfort, as a mother’s love should.
Today, on Mother’s Day, we give our thanks and appreciation to our mothers and to the women in our lives who have blessed us with unconditional love, with encouragement, with comfort – the women who raised us, shaped us, and prepared us for the world. And we remember the love of our Lord, who did all those things not only with us, but with those women in our lives as well.
And so we honor and celebrate our mothers and those foundational women in our lives, the women who first showed love to each us, in the name of our Lord God, who poured all love into the world through every generation of his people.
To God be all glory, praise, and honor. Amen.
Let us pray.
Gracious God. We give you thanks today for our mothers. For the women who raised us. For grandmothers, stepmothers, godmothers, foster mothers, aunts, and sisters. We bless you for the love, for the compassion, and for the comfort they give us. For the work they put into forging strong and lasting bonds of family. And we give you our thanks for creating those bonds, as you create bonds between all people. We cannot imagine all of the ways in which you love us, support us, invite us, and guide us in our lives. And so we simply pray to you in heartfelt thanksgiving. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.