Mother

Mother

 "Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrong doing. It does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres." (1 Cor. 13:4-6)

 Moms, I have a question: Why do you love your newborn? Silly question, I know. But indulge me for just a moment because why do you?. Maybe it’s because I’m a guy, but for months this baby has given you pain, made you break out in pimples and waddle like a duck. Because of this child, you craved sardines and crackers and threw up in the morning. He punched you in the stomach. She occupied space that wasn’t hers and ate food she didn’t fix. You kept him warm. You kept her safe. You kept him fed. But did she say thank you? No.

 She’s no more out of the womb than she starts to cry. The room’s too cold; the blanket’s too rough; the nurse is too mean. And who does she want? Mom. I mean, he didn’t even tell you he was coming. He just came. And what a coming! The baby made you a barbarian, right? I mean, you screamed; you swore; you bit bullets and tore the sheets. And now look at you: your back aches, your head pounds, your body’s drenched in sweat, and every muscle has been strained or stretched. You should be angry. But you’re not. On your face is a for-longer-than-forever love. She’s done nothing for you, yet all you can talk about are her good looks and bright future. He’s going to wake you up every night for the next six weeks, but that doesn’t matter because you’re crazy about him. Why? Which brings me to this question.

 God, why do you love your children? I don’t want to sound irreverent, but only heaven knows how much pain we’ve brought you. Why do you tolerate us? You give us the breath we breathe, but do we thank you? You give us bodies beyond compare, but do we praise you? Seldom. We complain about the weather. We bicker about our toys. Not a second passes when someone, somewhere doesn’t use your name to curse a hammered thumb, or a bad call by the umpire. You fill the world with food, but we blame you for hunger. You keep the earth from tilting, and the Arctics’ from thawing, but we accuse you of unconcern. You give us blue skies, and we demand rain. You give us rain, and we demand sun. Frankly, we give more applause to an athlete, or an actor, or a singer than we do the God who made us.

We sing more songs to the moon than to the Christ who saved us. We’re a gnat on the tail of one elephant in a galaxy of Africa’s and yet we demand that you find us a parking place when we ask. And if you don’t give us what we want, we say you don’t exist. We pollute the world you’ve loaned us. We ignore the Word you sent us. And we killed the Son you became. We’re spoiled babies who take and kick and pout and blaspheme. You have every reason to abandon us. In fact, I’d wash my hands of the whole mess and start over on Mars if it were up to me.

But it’s not, and I see your answer in the rising sun. I hear the answer in the crashing waves. I feel the answer in the skin of a child. Father, your love never ceases. Though we spurn and ignore and disobey you, you do not change. Our evil can’t diminish your love, and our goodness can’t increase it. Our faith doesn’t earn it anymore than our stupidity jeopardizes it. You don’t love me less if I fail; and you don’t love me more if I succeed. Your love never ceases. How do we explain it? I think it’s found in the eyes of a mother.

 So, why does she love her newborn, anyway? Is it because the baby’s hers? I think it’s more than that. It’s because the baby is her. Her blood; her flesh; her bone; her hope; her legacy. It doesn’t bother her that the baby gives nothing. She knows a newborn is helpless and weak. She knows babies don’t ask to come into this world. And God knows we didn’t either. We’re his idea. We are his. His face; his eyes; his hands; his touch.

Look deeply into the face of every human being on earth and you’ll see his likeness. Though some appear to be distant relatives, they’re not. God has no cousins, only children. We are, incredibly, the body of Christ. And though we may not act like our Father, there is no greater truth than this: We are his. Unalterably. He loves us. Undyingly. There’s nothing that can separate us from the love of Christ. (Rom. 8:38, 39) And had God not said those words, I’d be foolish to write them. But since he did, I’d be foolish not to believe them. Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. Nothing. But, oh how difficult it is to embrace and accept that truth.

Because we think we’ve committed an act which places us outside his love. A treason; a betrayal; an aborted promise. We think he’d love us more if we hadn’t done it, right? We think he’d love us more if we did more, right? We think if we were better his love would be deeper, correct? Wrong, wrong and wrong. His love is not human. His love is not normal. His love sees our sin and loves us anyway. Does he approve of our sin? No. Do we need to repent? Yes. But do we repent for his sake or ours? Ours, because his ego needs no apology. His love needs no reassurance. And he could not love us more than he does right now. Here’s a story that may help. It’s been adapted from an AP writer, John Thor-Dahlburg, in a column he wrote dated December 29, 1988.

A mother and her daughter were entombed in eternal night. Their only food, a jar of blackberry jam, was gone. Tons of smashed concrete lay around them becoming their prison. "Mommy, I'm so thirsty. I want to drink," cried the 4-year-old little girl. Susanna Petrosyan, the little girl’s mother, was trapped in the wreckage and lay flat on her back. A prefabricated concrete panel lay only 18 inches above her head; a crumpled water pipe was directly above her shoulders – both of which kept her from standing. She wore only a slip and it was bitterly cold. Susanna shivered in the darkness – it was December. Beside her lay the lifeless body of her sister-in-law, Karine. She had been crushed by an avalanche of concrete and died while pinned beneath the rubble one day after the massive earthquake had leveled much of Leninakan and other towns and villages in northwest Armenia.

Earlier that day, Susanna and her young daughter, Gayaney, had been driven by Susanna’s husband, Gerkham, a shoemaker, to the apartment building on Kamo Street in Leninakan where Gerkham’s sister, Karine, lived. After dropping off his wife and daughter, Gerkham went on to work, completely unaware of what would become of his family in the next few minutes.

Mrs. Petrosyan, a petite woman with thick black hair and curving eyebrows, wanted to try on a particular black dress with puffed shoulders that Karine had for sale. Susanna wanted the evening to be just right, since it wasn’t often that she and her husband could go out on a date night on a shoemaker’s salary. The dress fit her perfectly, and Susanna was happy to pay Karine the discounted family price for such a beautiful dress. Then suddenly, at 11:41 a.m., as she was readying to leave her sister-in-law’s apartment, the fifth-floor apartment began to tremble, and then shake violently. Dressed only in a slip and her underwear, she grabbed Gayaney – who was wearing a heavy winter sweater – and they sprinted for the door. And that’s when the floor opened up and the 36-unit apartment building collapsed. The three women, Susanna, Gayaney and Karine, fell into the basement as the nine-story building crumbled around them.

 "Mommy, I need to drink," sobbed Gayaney. "Please give me something." Although trapped on her back, Susanna managed to find a 1½ lb. jar of blackberry jam that had fallen into the basement, apparently from Karine's pantry. On the second day of their entombment – the day when Karine had died of her injuries – she gave the entire jar of blackberry jam to Gayaney to eat. Susanna also found a dress, perhaps the one she had tried on, and made a bed for Gayaney upon which to rest. And despite the bitter cold, Susanna took off her stockings and wrapped them around her daughter to keep her warm. “I may die,” Susanna thought, “but I want my daughter to live.”

But as the days passed, Gayaney's pleas for something to drink became more pressing. Susanna began entertaining thoughts that her child might die of thirst if they weren’t rescued soon. And that’s when it happened. Susanna remembered something she had seen on television. It was a program she had watched some time ago about an explorer in the Arctic who was dying of thirst. To save him, his comrade had slashed open his hand and given his friend his blood. “I’m thirsty; I want to be in my own bed; I want to see Daddy,” Gayaney sobbed. Out of water; out of fruit juice; out of any kind of liquid; out of hope. The only thing available was Susanna’s blood.

Even though she was trapped in darkness, Susanna could slide on her back from side to side. Eventually, her groping, outstretched fingers, numb from the cold, found a piece of shattered glass. And then she did it. She sliced open her left index finger with the shard and gave her finger to her daughter to suck on. Susanna couldn’t remember what day she cut open her fingers, or even how many times she used the method to feed her daughter. Susanna had lost all track of time in the unchanging darkness. But the drops of blood weren't enough. "Please, Mommy, some more. Cut another finger," Gayaney begged. Susanna made more cuts in her flesh, feeling nothing because of the bitter cold. She put her hand to her child's mouth, squeezing her fingers to make more blood come. Susanne knew at this point that she was going to die, but she wanted – now more than life itself – for her daughter to live.

On Dec. 14, the eighth day of their nightmare, rescue workers opened a small hole that let in a slender shaft of light. "We're saved!" Susanna cried. "There's a child in here, be careful not to hurt her!" she screamed as her rescuers got closer. Her husband, Gerkham, had been uninjured in the quake and was now searching desperately with the other rescuers for his family whom he had left more than a week ago at his sister’s. When Susanna emerged, the two tearfully embraced, but only for a moment. Susanna, along with Gayaney, were placed on a stretcher and flown to Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, some 60 miles away. From there, Gayaney was taken to Children's Hospital No. 3, and Susanna was transported to the Armenian National hospital.

Gayaney was in intensive care for four days, hooked up to intravenous bottles that dripped liquids into her parched body. Her temperature was dangerously low, her blood alarmingly thick and she was in shock. Gayaney was also in a deep state of depression, and wouldn't even talk or smile. Susanna, also dehydrated, was given intravenous fluids and placed in a coffin-like box so that pressurized oxygen could be pumped around her as a treatment against her previous exposure and resultant hypothermia. It was only then that doctors discovered that Susanna, who also had a 7-year-old son who was not hurt in the earthquake, was also two months' pregnant. Gayaney now had something to smile about.

“This cup is the new covenant in my blood,” Jesus explained, holding up the wine. (Luke 22:20) Jesus’ claim must have really puzzled the disciples. As good Jewish boys, they’d been taught from childhood the story of the Passover wine: it symbolized the lamb’s blood that the Israelites, enslaved long ago in Egypt, had painted on the door posts and lentils of their homes. That blood literally kept death from their homes and saved their firstborn, human and animal alike. And it was this last miracle that had helped deliver Israelites from the clutches of the Egyptians.

So, for hundreds, maybe even thousands of generations thereafter, the Jewish people had observed the Passover by sacrificing a lamb. Every year the blood of the lamb would be poured, and every year the deliverance would be celebrated. The law, you see, had required the spilling of the blood of a lamb. A perfect lamb. A lamb without spot or blemish. And that blood would be enough – at least for that year.

It would be enough to fulfill the law and to satisfy the command. It would be enough to satisfy God’s justice. But it could not take away sin “…because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” (Hebrews 10:4) Sacrifices could only offer temporary solutions; only God could offer an eternal one. So, He did – He sent Jesus.

And beneath the rubble of a fallen world, he pierced his hands. In the wreckage of a collapsed humanity, he ripped open his side. His children were trapped in sin, so he gave His blood. It was all he had. His friends were gone. His strength was waning. His possessions had been gambled away in a dice game at his feet. Even his Father had turned his face on him. His blood was all he had. But his blood was all that was needed. “If anyone is thirsty,” Jesus once said, “Let him come to me and drink.” (John 7:37)

But admitting we’re thirsty doesn’t come easy for us. False fountains temporarily soothe our thirst with the swallows of the pleasures of this life. But there comes a time in each of our lives when pleasures don’t satisfy. There comes a dark hour in every life when the world caves in and we’re left trapped in the rubble of reality, parched and dying. And frankly, some would rather die than admit it. But others are willing to admit it and escape death. “God, I need help.” So, the thirsty come. And the thirsty are a pretty motley bunch – bound together by the common experiences of broken dreams and collapsed promises. Fortunes that were never made, or families that were never built, or promises that were never kept. We’re just like Gayaney – a wide-eyed child trapped in the basement of our failures. And we’re very thirsty.

Not thirsty so much for fame, or possessions, or passion or even romance. We’ve drank from those pools, plenty, and what we’ve found is that they’re like salt water in the desert: they don’t quench – they kill. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” (Matt. 5:6) Righteousness. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what we’re really thirsty for. We’re thirsty for a clean conscience. We crave a clean slate. We long for a fresh start. We pray for a hand that can reach into the dark cavern of our world and do for us the one thing we can’t do for ourselves – makes us right again. “Mommy, I’m so thirsty,” Gayaney begged. “It was then I remembered I had my own blood,” Susanna explained. And her hand was cut, the blood was poured and her child was saved.

“God, I’m so thirsty,” we pray. “It is my blood, the blood of the new covenant,” Jesus said, “shed to set many free from their sins.” (Matt. 26:28) And the hand was pierced, the blood was poured and the children are saved.

Happy Mother’s Day,

Randy