Celebrating Life (05/010/2026)

What a wonderful idea, “Mother’s Day.” It’s not just that I am one; it is also because one carried me, nurtured me, and offered me hospitality that cost her dearly before I had a name or accomplished anything. I am blessed to have a mother; I am blessed to be a mother. Celebrating mothers helps us realize better and appreciate more deeply the lives we’ve been given because someone was willing to carry us to birth, cooperating with the LORD’s desire that we be.

This week when there is such division in our nation over a woman’s right to choose, I have to come down hard and firmly on the “choose life” side. I believe that life does begin at conception. While the embryo will change a multitude of times and in a multitude of ways between conception, fetus, and birth of a baby, the divine design that makes the life of a human being possible are all there in our beginnings. The Call of the Prophet Jeremiah tell us of the LORD’s role in our being: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.”

Psalm 139: 13-16 give us ever more detail and reminds us:

You formed my inmost being;

you knit me in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, because I am wonderfully made;

wonderful are your works!

My very self you know.

My bones are not hidden from you,

When I was being made in secret,

fashioned in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw me unformed;

in your book all are written down;

my days were shaped, before one came to be.

On Mother’s Day, my thoughts always go to the Blessed Mother, Mary. Her receptivity of the LORD’s will is so tangible that through the power of the Spirit she becomes a mother, the mother of Jesus, the mother of the bearer of salvation, the first bearer of Christ, the first Christian. I pray that I might be receptive to the will of the LORD for me and others. I pray that I might be open to what is possible through the Spirit. I pray that I might be a “bearer of Christ” in this world today.

Let us all give thanks to our LORD for our life which began in, with and through the LORD. Let us give thanks for the one who carried us, nurtured us, and birthed us. Let us give thanks to and for the one who mothered us.

Let those of us who are mothers, give thanks this day to the LORD for a specific participation in the divine design for humanity. Let us give thanks to our children for their roles in making us who we are.

This day, let us celebrate life by celebrating mothers who have a special role in the LORD’s divine design.

Until tomorrow, love well.