Mom
"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. Why do you, because I don’t
get it. Maybe it’s because I’m a guy. But for months this baby has given you
pain, and 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?
Are you kidding me? 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; every muscle strained and 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?
God, I have a question: 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. (As if it were your fault) 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 blue skies, and
we demand rain. You give rain, and we demand sun. (As if we knew what was best,
anyway) 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. (As if our opinion
matters) We pollute the world you loan 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.
But 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? The answer’s found, I
believe, in the eyes of a mother.
So, why does she love her newborn, anyway? Is
it because the baby’s hers? Even more. 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 would be a fool to write them. But since he
did, I’d be a fool not to believe them. Nothing can separate us from the love
of Christ. 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, right?
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 pinned beneath the rubble only 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 (it was too dark to tell), 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 god 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.” (Jn 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. You know, don't you? 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.[1]
Grace,
Randy
