The word of God is quite clear that those who know the Lord, not merely know about the Lord, are destined for life with our Heavenly Father for all eternity. Not everyone knows this truth, and part of who we are as Christ-followers is helping people hear and receive the gospel message. For genuine believers in Christ, heaven is our home.
My mom is home. I miss her.
As I pause to write this column, my mind is filled with mental images of her. Her smile was warm and hospitable. There was always enough supper for us to bring home a stray friend that we just met.
She always wore an apron in the kitchen. She would often wipe her hands on it while she cooked a meal for a friend in her ladies Sunday School class. She honestly cared for people. It seemed to me the more she read and studied her Bible, the more her love for Jesus grew and the more deeply she loved people.
Vacation Bible School seemed to always charge her spiritual battery. She would go to great lengths to prepare crafts and make cookies. Store-bought cookies were too “fakey.” If we were really nice, my brother and I could get a warm chocolate chip cookie fresh from mom’s blue Chambers oven. Yum.
One year, VBS was about God at work in creation. Mom collected all kinds of things that would demonstrate God’s creativity in the natural order. But there were limits to what she would display.
Three days before VBS, I happened to be plowing the small field behind the house and disturbed a small grass snake. I jumped off the tractor, caught the snake and put it in my pocket for mom. Then I plowed to the end of the row that ended near the back door of the house. I stopped the tractor and ran into kitchen to reveal to mom what I had found for her. When I pulled the snake out of my pocket, my mom leapt to the other side of the kitchen table in a single bound.
“Johnny Lee, you get that thing out of my kitchen and out of my house,” exclaimed mom.
“But mom, I thought you would want to display it for VBS,” I argued. “It is harmless.”
“I don’t like snakes, harmless or not,” she replied. You take that, that, thing out in the yard and don’t ever bring it or its relatives in my house or my VBS classroom.”
I think on that day she would have wrung my neck like she did when it was time to harvest a chicken. My mom had limits, and she loved you enough to let you know.
I loved it that mom was at home while I was growing up. She could have worked outside the home when my siblings and I were young. But instead, she gave higher priority to pouring herself into our young lives. Since she was the daughter of an Oklahoma share-cropper, she understood hard work. As a young girl, she worked all day with a hoe in her hand, tending to cotton plants. I’m sure there were days of wrestling with the five of us young’uns that she would have gladly grabbed a hoe and headed for the field.
Gratefully, she loved us so much that she chose to be at home with us to love us, teach us, and train us to be people of purpose. She did want us to walk with the Lord, and I heard her pray such. Her presence at home meant that my siblings and I experienced an amazing level of security, acceptance, and love.
Eventually, she did go to work at the local public school as a teacher’s aide. She had the reputation of loving on the roughest of kids. My dad talks about walking into the school house on multiple occasions only to find mom sitting on the floor with some of the school’s notorious roustabouts.
She would have her arm around the child, and either she would read them a book or the child would sound out the words slowly and read the book to mom. I don’t know the family context of those children, but I know they experienced authentic love from my mom.
I am glad mom is now home with the Lord. I would not want her to hear how profane and uncivil our culture has become. I would not want her hear the stories of the broken homes and broken lives.
This Mother’s Day, capture the moment to express gratitude and value for your mom. If she is already home in heaven, share with your wife, or a senior adult lady in your church, that you respect her for the sacrifices she has made for love.
How? Look her straight in the eyes and say something like this, “You remind me of my mom in so many ways. Thank you.”