Why Do God and Our Mothers Put Up with Us?

December 23, 2024

Max Locado poses a wonderful question at the beginning of his sermon “For Longer Than Forever” (A Gentle Thunder, p. 45 ff.). He asks, “Why do you love your children?” And then he goes on to answer all the reasons that God should not love us. God gives us every breath we breathe, but do we thank Him? God gives us bodies beyond duplication, but do we praise Him? We complain about the weather, we bicker about our toys, we argue over who gets which continent and who has the best gender. Not a second passes when someone, somewhere, doesn’t use God’s name to curse a hammered thumb or a bad call by the umpire. (As if it were God’s fault.) God keeps the earth from tilting and the Arctic from thawing, but we accuse God of unconcern. God gives us the most blessed 200-year history of any nation in human history, and we remove God’s name from our schools, government buildings and public discourse. And, if God doesn’t give us what we want, we say God doesn’t exist. (As if our opinion matters.) We are spoiled babies who take and kick and pout and blaspheme. God has every reason to abandon us. But God doesn’t, instead, God loves us.

Why do we love our newborn babies? Think about it from a mother’s perspective. For months, this baby has brought pain, she (or he!) makes Mom break out in pimples and waddle like a duck, makes Mom crave sardines and crackers and throw up many mornings. The baby is a parasite as it occupies the space that isn’t his/hers and eats the food s/he didn’t fix. Mom keeps the baby warm, safe, and well-fed, but does the baby say thank you? No, instead, s/he puts mom through childbirth, racking her body with pain, reducing her to a barbarian. The baby is no more out of the womb than she starts to cry! The room is too cold; the blanket is too rough and the nurse is too mean. And who does she want? Mom! Mom doesn’t get a break. Who has been doing the work for the last nine months? Why can’t Dad take over? But no, that won’t do. The baby wants Mom.

Mom should be angry, but is she? No, she’s far from it. On her face is a look of pure love. The baby has done nothing, yet Mom loves her. The future will be sleepless nights and long days, with more and more demands on Mom’s time, completely dependent upon Mom for everything.

Why does a mother love her newborn? Because the baby is hers? Even more. Because the baby is her. That baby is her blood, flesh and chromosomes. That baby is also her hope and legacy, and Mom is full of dreams. It bothers her not that the baby gives nothing. She knows babies don’t ask to come into this world. (Thanks to Max Lucado for these Christmas insights).

God knows we didn’t either. We are his idea, e are his. He tells us in Genesis that He created us in His image (Genesis 1:27). He tells us throughout the Old Testament that He would send a Messiah to bring salvation and eternal life. At just the right time, He sends us the babe in Bethlehem. Isaiah tells us 700 years before Jesus was born, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).

Like a loving mother, God is committed to us no matter how hard we are to care for. It doesn’t matter what we have done, who we have hurt, how unfaithful we have been or what we have lost, God’s love for us will not end. This Christmas, Jesus humbles himself for each of us, for though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God as something to be grasped (Philippians 2:5-6). He came because he had a world to save. He was born because you and I need love and salvation.

What does the birth of the Christ child mean to you? Have you realized Jesus is the greatest gift you have ever been given? At lunch or dinner today ask the people you eat with about what it means to say, “Jesus is the greatest gift we have ever been given.” Say a prayer giving your life to Jesus Christ anew today. Praise Jesus, our Lord and Savior!

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