Happy Mother’s Day! Your work is important…

Household management:

She watches over the ways of her household, And does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; Her husband also, and he praises her: “Many daughters have done well, But you excel them all.” Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, And let her own works praise her in the gates. (Proverbs 31.27 – 31, NKJV)

Teaching:

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. (Titus 2.3 – 5, ESV)

Raising the next generation of Christian leaders. Paul wrote to Timothy:

I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. (2 Timothy 1.5 – 7, ESV)

Thank you!

PS The high view of women and mothers, as presented in the Bible, is not universally held. I just finished a novel by the late Michael Crichton, The Great Train Robbery, inspired by events in Victorian England in the 1850s. The book gives us glimpses into London society, where, as the teaser for the book starts:

London, 1855, when lavish wealth and appalling poverty exist side by side…

Another theme is the station of women at that time. They were considered to be emotional creatures with no intellect put on earth solely to serve men. Michael Crichton points out the absurdity of that position:

The belief in a biologically determined personality in both men and women was accepted to some extent by nearly everyone at all levels of Victorian society, and that belief was held in the face of all sorts of incongruities. A businessman could go off to work each day, leaving his “unreasoning” wife to run an enormous household, a businesslike task of formidable proportions; yet the husband never viewed his wife’s activities in that way. (Page 323)

Again, thank all you mothers for your work. It’s important AND difficult!