God, the Mother - Mother’s Day Message - Genesis 1:27

Have you ever noticed how people make so much more fuss over Mother’s Day than they do over Father’s Day? Mothers get flowers, candy, and gifts, but fathers are lucky to get a card or a call. 

James Dobson told the story of a prison chaplain who wanted to promote attendance at the worship service on Mothers’ Day by giving out cards for prisoners to send to their mothers. It was a huge success. So many prisoners wanted them that they soon ran out. It was so successful they decided to try the same thing on Fathers’ Day. But that day it flopped. Only one or two cards were ever taken.  Many prisoners didn’t even know who their fathers were, and most had no desire to honor them.

Mothers are loved in a way that we fathers can only envy. We may love our father, but there’s something special and different in the way we love our mother.

Why? I believe it has a lot to do with the difference between people created as male and female. I want to explore that difference today, and in the next few Sundays. 

The first reference to gender difference comes from the first chapter of the Bible Genesis 1:27:

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

Notice the structure of this verse. God made “man” in His own image. He says this before anything about gender differences. The best aspects of both genders are in God. He’s both protecting and tender. Though the Bible consistently calls Him Father, He’s mother as well. 

“Male and female created He them.”  God divide us into only two genders—male and female. Among us He divided up His perfect image into two distinct forms. One is not superior to the other, but complimentary creations. One gender emphasizes certain traits, while the other emphasizes others.

This last line reads, “male and female created He them.”  The line between male and female characteristics is not absolute, but both men and women possess all masculine and feminine characteristics. Each side represents a certain cluster of traits. Men can be emotional nurturers and women can be tough protectors. If a man loses his wife, then he must be both father and mother to his children. If a woman loses her husband, then she must be the protector and disciplinarian. We are all both masculine and feminine, but in a loving relationship we assume mutually agreed upon roles.

These differences are mostly revealed not through cultural force or dominance, but in a loving, trusting relationship where both men and women are free to be themselves. Gender roles come out more in mutual love and respect. Women can be fully women and men fully men when they are given freedom and love, not rigid structure.

God made differences between people so we can love each other better. Differences are necessary for learning real love. If we only love people who are like ourselves in every way, we are really just loving ourselves. To love another is to respect and to honor the differences between us. 

Love is the basis for the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What holds the Trinity together is the mutual love of three separate, distinct persons in the Godhead. The Father Is not the Son, nor the Son the Holy Spirit, but they love each other perfectly.  One does not lord it over the other. The Trinity is not subordination—Father on top and the Son and Spirit down lower—but the three Persons form an equal, loving partnership. In love, they invite us into the circle through the sacrifice of Christ. In their mutual love, they willingly submit to each other and we submit to them in gladness and joy, experiencing the blessing of our diversity in Him. The future of the human race dependent on men and women loving each other. 

The same is true of marriage. Marriage is an equal, loving partnership. A loving husband does not ever demand his wife obey him, nor would a loving wife fail to do anything her husband wanted or would make him happy. In a loving home, no decision would ever be made without consulting the other. There is no jealousy or fear in love, nor pride or dominance, but mutual concern and respect.

We need the love and companionship of those who are different from us. Men and women need each other, just as blacks and whites need each other, rich and poor need each other, and people of different political perspectives need each other. We complete each other, gaining perspective by sharing life with those who are different from us. Homosexuality and racism at their core have the same problem—we think we can get by only loving those like us. Our differences make us stronger.

Other than the obvious physical traits, what’s the difference between male and female? We can get a sense of what those are through God’s word and the observation of the people around us.  Whatever those differences are, they are both found in the nature of God. He is called “Father,” but He can also be called, “Mother” because He bears the traits that we love and admire in mothers. 

Here are a few verses that show that celebrate the motherly traits of God.   

Psalm 131, “I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.” Resting in God is compared to a child resting on a mother’s bosom.  

Isaiah 66:13, “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.” God provides Israel with the sense of nurture and protection we get from our mothers or wives. 

I Thess 2:7 But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. Paul declares that his apostolic minister was that of nurture and protection, like a mother. 

God is like an ideal mother, (unfortunately, not all mothers are ideal!)  Ideal mothers love us no matter what. They don’t judge; they don’t reject us if we fail to perform; they don’t care whether we are pretty or ugly; but they just love us.  

Mothers bake us cakes on our birthday. They are our number-one cheerleaders. They kiss us goodnight in the evening and smile to see us get up in the morning. From our first moments, they hold us in their arms. They model before us care and gentleness.

There’s a poem by Julia Kasdorf called,  “Things I Learned from my Mother”:

“I learned from my mother how to love

the living, to have plenty of vases on hand

in case you have to rush to the hospital

with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants

still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars

large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole

grieving household, to cube home-canned pears

and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins

and flick out the seeds with a knife point. 

I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know

the deceased, to press the moist hands

of the living, to look in their eyes and offer

sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.

I learned that whatever we say means nothing,

what anyone will remember is that we came.

I learned to believe I had the power to ease

awful pains materially like an angel.

Like a doctor, I learned to create

from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once

you know how to do this, you can never refuse.

To every house you enter, you must offer

healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,

the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.”

God loves us like a mother. He cares and caresses us from the first moment of our conception, even before our mother’s womb. He always loves us, no matter what we do. He’s perfectly empathetic—He feels our pain. He provides us with the confidence and support we need to face the world.

Do you feel the love of God in your life, the way we feel the love of our mothers? Do you recognize in the Trinity the same love, consolation and support that we ideally got from Mom? We should. Our mothers were there to show us this aspect of God.  Mothers teach us what it means to have God love us so when we grow up, they can know what God’s love feels like. This is our first and primary need. If we haven’t experienced the nurturing nature of God’s love, we cannot fully understand or appreciate his correction, power or judgment. God’s nurturing mother love is the first thing we need to know of Him.

This division of male and female doesn’t just speak to our understanding of God, but it has practical application in our daily family life. We need to learn to discover the masculine and feminine nature in our approach to one another. 

If men are protectors and women nurturers, then who nurtures the nurturer, and who protects the protector? Here’s where we make a terrible mistake--and men make it more than women. We make gender roles so rigid that we can’t provide support and love for each other. For a man to love his wife, he must embrace his feminine side along with his masculine side. Women need to be nurtured tenderly by their husbands.

When your wife is affectionate, do you return affection? When your mother tells you she loves you, do you tell her the same? Do you kiss your children good night, and tuck them into bed? If you want your wife to treat you like a king, treat her like a queen. While your wife is being tender and affectionate, she also need affection and tenderness.  

Showing love isn’t easy for some of us, but it is necessary for all of us. The capacity for tenderness exists in us all, because we are created in God’s image. But it may take attentiveness and concentration to remember this. Loving the different, beautiful creature in your own home is how we mirror the Trinity on earth.

More about that next week.