Happy Mother's Day!

I look forward to celebrating my mother, my wife, and my mother-in-law every year. I have a great relationship with all of them and they deserve to be celebrated. But for many, this is not the case.

Not all of us have mothers to celebrate and for many, Mother’s Day can be very difficult. If there's one thing we know about, it's that God understands our struggles.

After clarifying that God has indeed revealed himself to us as Father, Amy Simpson goes on to lay out all the ways that God is not only a "Father to the Fatherless", He's also a "Mother to the Motherless".

She says

“God is described as a woman in labor (Isaiah 42:14) and as having given birth to his people (Deuteronomy 32:18). He is compared to a nursing mother (Isaiah 49:15), to a comforting mother (Isaiah 66:13; Psalm 131:2), and to a mother teaching her child to walk (Hosea 11:3). God is described as a mother bear whose cubs have been taken away, as a hungry lioness (Hosea 13:8), as a mother eagle caring for her young (Deuteronomy 32:11-12), and as a mother hen (Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34). David compared God to a woman (Psalm 123:2-3), and Jesus himself likened God to a woman cleaning her house to find a lost coin (Luke 15:8-10).”

My favorite is Isaiah 66:12-13 where Isaiah refers to Jerusalem as a mother.

Whether you interpret Jerusalem as the redeemed church or the eternal kingdom of heaven, the fact remains; God is not just a "Father to the Fatherless", He's also a "Mother to the Motherless".

Maybe you and your mother are in great standing today and you're excited to celebrate Mother's Day this weekend. Or maybe like so many others, you're struggling this Mother’s Day because you don't have a mother to celebrate. Either way, let me encourage you, if you haven’t already, be born again by the Spirit of God and enter into the family of God.

Allow God to be both a Mother and a Father to you.