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Dear friend,
Mother’s Day is pretty complicated.
For some, it’s a day to celebrate our mothers and motherhood in general. And for some, it’s a day of trauma because of broken relationships and peoples’ own struggles with motherhood.
The Bible gives advice to us on days like today where our relationship study’s with motherhood can best be described as: it’s complicated.
In Romans, Paul writes:
“Your love must be sincere… Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”
I know I’ve been part of churches who have had good intentions by celebrating Mother’s Day, but the impact has done harm, erasing those who are hurting. The implicit message sent is that your hurt doesn’t matter. In general, we do a good job at rejoicing with those who rejoice, and a poor job of weeping with those who weep. When we do that, we don’t reflect a God who weeps as well as rejoices.
So this Sunday we will hold the complexity of emotions brought in our bodies to worship—weeping and rejoicing and everything between. We will celebrate with the Marks family who is baptizing Elijah and we will grieve with others who are processing pain and trauma. That’s what being the church is all about.
3 Things You Might Not Know About Proverbs 31
by Rachel Held Evans
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