Broken Pictures, Mended Hearts

I remember hearing a news report many years ago of a criminal on death row.  He had committed numerous unspeakable crimes, and the night before his execution, people carried signs of rejoicing outside the prison in celebration of his impending death.  That grim night, he received one phone call:  From his mother.  She called to say goodbye, and to tell him that she still loved him. 

 

I am not familiar enough with this man’s story to be able to say whether his mother was at all culpable in his demise, but her phone call makes a remarkable statement about motherhood:  If you sell yourself to work evil and to multiply tragedy to innocent victims; if you find yourself the most hated man in the world; and if righteous people must take the most drastic of measures to protect their society from you;  then be assured that in your darkest final hour, part of my heart will lie down and die beside you anyway.  Because I am your mother. 

 

Motherhood is an earthly picture of God’s great love for us.  Like the mother of a criminal on death row, making that last anguished phone call to the child she once held, God demonstrated His love to us in that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” 

 

Mother’s Day is not just the story of how powerful a mother’s love is; this is the human picture of how much God loves us.  You want to measure God’s love?  You want to know what it means to be loved by someone who loves you even more than you could love yourself; for someone to feel your pain even more acutely than you can feel it yourself?  Here is your yardstick:  That’s what a mother does.  I am so blessed to have one of those spiritual “yardsticks,” a mother who prays for me, loves me, and has consistently demonstrated God’s love to me.  I never struggled to understand God’s love.  My picture is intact, and with each passing year I am more and more thankful for how well my sacrificial, godly mother has illustrated God’s love for me.    

 

But for some people, Mother’s Day is a painful reminder of what wasn’t.  The picture of God’s love has been marred by harsh treatment, abandonment, neglect, and absence.  Mother’s Day cards, with their sweet sentiments, sharply injure where hurtful words and selfish decisions have left gaping wounds.   The "natural affection" that God gave mothers, to protect us at all costs, has disappeared in some families.  The metaphor has been shattered. 

 

God once created an Old Testament metaphor for salvation.  As the Israelites traveled through the wilderness on their long journey to Canaan, God used a rock to illustrate Jesus Christ, the Rock of our salvation.  At first, Moses was instructed to strike the rock (which he did), and water gushed out.  Later, in Numbers 20, Moses was told to speak to the rock.  This time, though, Moses lost his temper with the people and struck the rock instead.  His disobedience totally disrupted God’s picture of salvation.  God was so displeased with the blasphemy that Moses lost his entrance into the Promised Land.  Yet, miraculously, water still came out of the rock.   Even when an earthly leader smashed God’s metaphor with an impulsive and fleshly snap-decision, God still met the needs of the people He loved. 

 

When human failure breaks down God’s picture, skip the metaphor and run straight to God.  David said, “When my mother and my father forsake me, the Lord will take me up.”  The God Who made water gush from a desert rock, despite the disastrous mistake of a frustrated leader, can work despite human failings.  He can meet your needs, even when the human hands He created for showing His love to you are sadly missing from the picture of your life.  For those of you whose mother was not there—let God fill in those places.  For those who struggle today with the scars of a dysfunctional home, remember that where your mother cannot understand you, accept you, forgive you, or love you with the unconditional love God meant to show you, that is the place where you go straight to the nail-prints and let those hands instead wrap around your hurt. 

 

God is big enough to make water rush from a rock, and He is big enough to be your “mother.”   Choose your focus wisely this Mother's Day.  Turn from your shattered human pictures and aim your eyes higher, to the One Who can mend your heart.  And remember:  "You are loved with an everlasting love."