Editorial
LOOKING UP: Remembering Mothers
Wednesday, 23 May 2012 by JOE BAISDEN
It has been years since hearing the song "Mother."
I was asked to sing it one time in a Mother's Day program at a nursing home. I declined, not knowing the words. The Internet with its easy access to such things was not handy in that day.
Some time later someone presented me with a copy, and I offer the words to you for your reflections as Mother's Day 2012 approaches.
"M" is for the millions things she gave me.
"O" means only that she's growing old.
"T" is for the tears she shed to save me.
"H" is for her heart of purest gold.
"E" is for her eyes with love light shining.
"R" is right and right she'll always be.
Put them all together, they spell 'Mother'
The one who means the world to me.
What comes to your mind with each line? What were the million things your mother gave you? Was it just a million?
My Mom has been gone since 1984, but she is still giving to me things that really count. Memories of her compassionate heart soften my own heart when it otherwise might harden. Now and then I am startled and amazed as an overwhelming wave of sorrow flushes a mad from my mind and fills me with pity for someone whom I might otherwise hold in contempt.
Many the times my mothers eyes would literally begin to fill with tears, when seeing cars parked at a funeral home. She might not know who had died, but she knew some folks were there grieving with broken hearts.
Mom believed the best was possible even in the vilest of folks, and she refused to write them off. Without quoting these words of Jesus, she just lived them: "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do."
Mom never really grew old. She moved from the domain of an energetic, effervescent, and efficient homemaker into the frightening world of a failed mind. Even from the confusion there she gave what she could.
When there were those inevitable clashes between a mother and child, it was not the sting of the peach tree switch whipping around my calves that pointed me to salvation as much as her tears of grief over my misbehavior. When Mom broke down, so did my stubbornness and rebellion.
Mom never claimed to be always right, but she was right most of the time. Whatever she said or did came from "her heart of purest gold" — one conditioned by her Savior Jesus Christ.
Some of Jesus' last words were in remembrance of his mother. Longfellow put it this way: "Even He that died for us upon the cross, in the last hour, in the unutterable agony of death, was mindful of His mother."
Abraham Lincoln remembered his mother with these words: "All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother. I remember her prayers, and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life."
He also wrote: "No man is poor who has had a godly mother."
In this current culture with the world squeezing us into its own mold, mothers will have to fight harder than ever to leave a godly legacy.
"Her children rise up and call her blessed." – Prov. 31:29
