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Mothering

Mothers are the lifeblood of our best days on earth. It’s a role not chosen but gifted. And those willing to rise to the occasion shape the planet one laboring gesture at a time. From the act of childbirth to Sunday school to wiping a bloody lip, they exhibit selflessness. And in an age where we can command gadgets to relay anything at a moment’s notice (our every whim really), this is a fresh example.

It still takes nine months for this gift to arrive. The virgin Mary to our own parental DNA, they are all embedded with the will to survive, to nurture. We cry and are comforted. The diaper is changed before a nasty rash settles in. Food and sustenance are supplied by our caretakers. We bask and rest in summer months filled with sunshine and endless amounts of Vitamin D.

My own is someone I cannot even begin to describe. She deserves more than tangible gifts on a single Sunday in May. I laugh when websites suggest gifts for me to send her way on Mother’s Day. What could I ever share with her that equates to the gift of life? Can a person come remotely close to delivering something so substantial as their own date of birth?

My own wife, and best friend, is developing our own gift right this very moment. A date stated as her own date of birth in late summer. She glows with the radiance of new life beneath her. The stomach nests baby much like a mother hen caring for her own. Inside great things are at work, and I marvel at what is hidden, what kicks and jolts the epidermis after some watermelon is munched down.

The skin of life stretches and new cells form. But unlike a yawning biology class, this is visible and mystifying. God’s own world growing before the naked eye. I watch and am comforted by the unknowable development. Something man cannot alter or create in a million lifetimes if he tried. The embryo that makes us all and hatches new wonders minute-by-minute. Time is paused and clocks are rendered useless while mothers do what only they can.

Birth without a death in sight is peace-filled, and worry is thankfully forgotten. Thanks being given to the Divine and for the mothers who created us into a world made better for it.

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Gloves Off Gospel

My pastor says things much more eloquently than me. He draws inferences from the Good Book, and I thank the Good Lord for it.

Some times I find myself just wanting to haul off and punch people.

But fortunately, I have people around me who teach biblical truth. A wife who loves first and foremost.

It stops my fist before it leaves the proverbial hangar.

Yesterday, Mark spoke on Revelation and made a connection to loving people I’d never heard in my 32 churchgoing years.

And before you stop reading, let me say right here that it wasn’t another LG,LP message. He didn’t make it about holding hands and skipping or anything.

It’s what I like to call Gloves Off Gospel.

It wasn’t highfaluting wish wash, but something that dug in and hit home.

The question he led with: Do you love as well as you used to? (Taken out of context this could mean anything. But here, for a Christian, it means what it says.)

Revelation 2 instructs every believer to – “do the works you did at first…”

This harps on how love diminishes in everyone who starts on warp speed, with mad love for God, and then, well, fizzles out.

Life, politics, saccharine packets, and bad pizza take their toll on our hearts metaphorically and literally. 1st world sucker punches happen and we think this somehow makes it okay to stop caring. I don’t know about you, but I’m not okay with any punch to my gut. From friend or foe.

My stomach hurts just typing this. I want to avoid the lull of carelessness. Forever.

Can we pray for impenetrable faith? Do we need extra compassion injections over time? Are we being the body we’re called to be?

January is cold and nothing can insulate like good works & faith.

Do I love as well as I used to?