'Bad' Moms of the Bible: How God Works Through Our Worst MomentsSample

Eve: Mother(less) of All

By Laura Dye

As a girl, I ironed my grandfather’s shirts when my grandmother was too weak to do many of her usual chores. Steam rose from the old iron, and I pressed the collar smooth.

Grandmother noted, “You iron like my mother did.” Somehow, I iron like my great-grandmother? Mom must have taught me the way my grandmother had taught her, which was the way my great-grandmother had taught her. I don’t iron much anymore, but I do remember how my mother taught me to iron shirts. It was a sweet moment thinking about the things handed down to me besides just the genetics of my eye color.

Everything we do has the fingerprints of our mothers. Even if we never met our mother, she affects who we are.

Eve was the first woman, created from Adam’s rib, the mother of all. Like my great-grandmother, Eve seems so far away—so far removed—from who I am. But she has everything to do with who I am, what I look like, and even my relationship with God.

Eve bore the honor of being the first woman while also taking the blame for the fall of mankind. And she had no mother of her own to guide her through any of it!

Eve had the perfect life and was married to the perfect man (even if he was the only man). She walked with God in the paradise of the garden, seeing marvelous creatures, and helping her husband with meaningful work. We cannot fathom the beauty of the life they enjoyed.

But it all came crashing down when she listened to the serpent and doubted God just a little bit. She ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All of a sudden, they were banished from their home in the garden. There were no more evening walks with God. Work now required clothing and became difficult with thorns and thistles.

Eve would experience the first childbirth, full of unprecedented pain. She likely had no idea what was coming, and she had no mother to advise her. For most of us, at least, somebody warns us about those toddler and teenage years. Eve did not have that.

Eve’s mothering must have felt chaotic and difficult, even with moments of joy. But we only have a record of a sibling rivalry that caused the first murder, more crushing pain.

I have seen chaotic mothers in the grocery store with wild children making very questionable parenting choices … OK, it was me. I was in the grocery store with my small children, doing everything wrong as a mother. Everything!

But I come from a long line of mothers doing “everything” wrong. It is certainly not a new scenario to God that I don’t know what to do as a mother. It is not new to Him that I am not just making bad choices but sinning against my holy God every single day.

But God, the best words ever, but God sent His Son, from the lineage of the first chaotic mother, to redeem those sins!

And then He takes me in His arms as my Heavenly Father and wipes every tear and washes me white as snow. I bring my harsh words to Him, and He removes them as far as the East is from the West (Psalm 103:12).

Let’s Reflect:

1. What does “a long line of mothers doing everything wrong” mean in your family (See Romans 3:23)?
2. How does God remove our sins as far as the East is from the West? (See Romans 5:8.)