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Children, the Bible says, are a gift from God. It seems logical to me, then, if children are a gift to parents from God, then parents are a gift from God to children. It also seems to me desperately sad how few parents and children experience each other as intentional gifts of divine love to the other.
This is the first Mother’s Day after my mother’s death. There is not a card to buy, no call to make. There is no anxiety this year over how the card and call will be received, whether there will be the classic argument that ended so many of our phone calls the last few years of her life. In one sense, I am relieved. In another sense, I feel guilty for being relieved.
My mother was three months pregnant when she and my father were married. While that situation is remarkably common today, it was a big, big deal in their small Irish Catholic Massachusetts community sixty years ago. From time to time, when mom was particularly disappointed or angry with me, she would remind me what a big deal it was. “If it weren’t for you, my life would be so much different! I had plans you know!” she would yell with fire in her eyes as if my conception and inconvenient existence were somehow a deliberate act of familial sabotage on my part. She wasted a lot of life expecting me to make up to her the error of my existence.
My mother wasn’t a bad mom. She worked hard, provided for her children, suffered a great deal under subsequent poor choices, did the best she could. She just never arrived at the place where she understood that my brother and sister and I were gifts bestowed by God upon her for her joy. We were obligations and were in turn, in her mind, obligated to her.
Her children were often thrown under the proverbial bus to gain the affection of whatever man was in her life at the moment. We were expected to either like the situation or endure in silence. We owed her that much at least she said. Objections went unheeded or rebuked. The last night my first stepfather, in an alcohol induced rage, beat her within an inch of her life and her three children knelt bawling on the floor beside the couch as she struggled for breath, begging her to please get rid of him before he killed us all, was the only time I saw her take action against her man on our behalf.
Today my sister and brother both have wonderful families. Their children and grandchildren know with certainty that they are loved and treasured. The wonder of children as gifts is not lost on any of them. What made the difference? For us it was the good news that the love and acceptance we long for as children and as humans is, at its most basic and universal level, a love hunger for God, which God Himself satisfies through the life and death of His beloved Son, Jesus Christ. Let me explain.
At the beginning of days God created humanity to dwell in an eternal relationship of love and joy with Himself and with one another. Man turned away from that purpose, disobeyed God, and in doing so brought a curse upon the entire human race, the curse of love hunger, the innate desire for the love and acceptance of our Creator, a love and acceptance forfeited on account of disobedience and sin. Individual efforts to satisfy that fundamental love hunger drive the abuse cycle that flourishes in every human culture. Love hunger drove my mom to surrender to pursue abusive men and hold her children in disdain.
Nothing in all creation can fill the void left by the absence of the infinite and eternal Creator from our hearts. No effort of our own can adequately satisfy that deep longing for eternal acceptance and unconditional love. We are lost in love hunger for God, failures at finding the love we want in others, and desperate for hope.
God responds to our desperate search for love by coming Himself into the world, taking on human nature and human flesh, accomplishing the purpose He set for humanity of unbroken fellowship with Himself, and then satisfying the demands of divine justice by suffering the punishment of death our sins deserve. God did this as the man, Jesus Christ.
On the cross Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It was the ultimate of human love hunger for God. It was the gut-wrenching confession of our universal condition and need. It was God’s plan and God’s mercy to make Christ the curse so that through Christ He would remove the curse from us, from all those who put their faith in Him.
God has given you a gift this Mother’s Day. Whether you are a mom or dad with children or just a child of a mom and dad, God has given His Son to you and for you. Learn more about Him. Put your trust in Him. Let Him satisfy once and for all that hunger within you for your Creator’s love and acceptance.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. Pastor Dale McIntire has served as pastor of the Cornerstone Community Church in Grand Marais since April of 1995.
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