A Mother’s Day Challenge

Here’s a challenge for your children this Mothering Sunday. It’s not making a beautiful card with lots of glitter, or boiling the perfect egg for breakfast-in-bed, or arranging daffodils in a vase with panache.

No, the challenge is this:
Can you explain why you love your mother without using the word “me”?

Depending on how old they are, I expect they’ll find it surprisingly hard. I remember my Dad asking me the same thing when I was little. Beyond “she makes me dinner”, “she reads me bedtime stories”, and “she hugs me when I’m upset”, I was stumped. The reason I loved my Mum was because she loved me.

Perhaps you’d find it a challenge too. 15 years later and my mother no longer reads me bedtime stories. And I can say why I love my Mum without using the word “me”. But while I certainly admire her character, when I unpick my reasons it exposes the shallowness of my imperfect human love. I love my Mum because she’s patient (with me); I love her because she gives good advice (not least, to me); she listens well (to me); and I love the way she loves and serves others (but most especially, if I’m honest, the way she loves and serves me).

God never uses the word “me” when explaining why he loves his people. He doesn’t say of us: “I love him because she prays to me”, or “I love him because he worships me”, or “I love her because she gives me money”.

No: “he saved us, not because of righteous things that we had done, but because of his mercy” (Titus 3:2).

What about the reasons we love God? Can we explain why we love God without using the word “me”? That would rule out reasons like: “Because he saved me”, “because he listens to me when I pray” or “because he promises me eternal life”. While it’s not wrong to love these things, they’re only an outworking of God’s character. We should love God for who he is—merciful, loving, just, holy—as well as what he does.