Who else but a mother is up all night rocking a colicky baby?

            Who else eats what’s left in the baby food jar, awakens with a start and dashes to the baby’s room at 2 a.m. only to find the baby sleeping peacefully, shouts when her baby takes his or her first step, turns her head in a crowd when a voice shouts “Mom,” finds an extra body in bed in the middle of a midnight thunderstorm, sleeps sitting up while holding a sick child, cries when leaving her child on the first day of school, paces the floor when that teenager is not home on time, feels that dull ache in her heart when peeping at her son or daughter the night before he or she leaves for college?

            Someone has said, “Home is what catches you when you fall,” and we all fall.

            A mother’s love is always listening for that phone call, that card, that letter or that email.

            A mother’s love is always there, hoping to see her now grown child often and sometimes she has to wait a long time.

            Being a mother of sons, I can only identify to a small degree, the agony Mary must have had for her son.

            Seeing my own son portraying Jesus in a pageant was almost more than I could bear.  Long before Lane came down that aisle, I could hear the Roman soldiers shouting.  I heard the snap of the whips as they popped against Lane’s back.  By the time the soldiers and Lane passed by, I cringed as I saw Lane struggling to carry that heavy splintered cross.  The soldiers beating him without mercy pierced my heart as Lane fell again and again.  The painted bloodstains ran down his face from under the crown of thorns and trickled down his body.

            I wanted to scream:  “Stop it! Stop it!  That’s my son!”

            It’s too real and I cannot even write about it without tears.

            It is then I think of Mary, the mother of Jesus.  In the innermost places of her heart, the pain had to be indescribable, wrenching and unbearable.  Imagine her agony as she looked at her son dying on the cross.

            She had to have felt searing pain and, being a mother, must have thought:  I gave him birth.  I rocked him tenderly.  I soothed his skinned knees, and removed splinters from his fingers.  I washed the sawdust from his clothes.  I cooked his favorite food.  I watched him grow.  He’s my Son!

            I am touched by the tender love of Jesus for his earthly mother.  “When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, ‘Dear woman, here is your son,’ and to the disciple, ‘here is your mother.’  From that time on, this disciple took her into his home”  (John 19:26 NIV).

            Seeing Jesus die on the cross had to be a terrible and sorrowful day for Mary.  I’m sure Mary pondered in her heart that it had to be.  Jesus’ death on the cross is mankind’s only hope.  Jesus was not only Mary’s son, but her Savior too.

            What a wonderful Mother’s Day Mary must have had when she saw Jesus again in that heavenly Kingdom.

            The fact that Jesus is coming again gives hope, not only to mothers, but also to every obedient believer. 

            Think of it, death is not the end.  Mothers everywhere will see their children again.  No more goodbyes will be said.  Mothers will have just begun to love and laugh with those she has longed to see.

            Because of Jesus, that will be the best Mother’s Day of all.