Life Lessons – Mother’s Day
By Doug Harrell
Mitchell County
“Her children arise up, and call her blessed; Her husband also, and he praiseth her.”
Proverbs 31:28 KJV
I was talking to my wife of almost 58 years, in fact, May 31 will be 58 years, and made the comment that I needed to write my Life Lessons for the month and was thinking about writing about marriage relationships and how critical they were to a long happy life. She suggested I write instead about Mother’s Day since that is coming up just after this paper hits the street and I agreed with her. Either one of those would be great topics, but I am going to follow her suggestion and focus on Mother’s Day.
I have been truly blessed to have a wife that has truly been a Biblical Mother in so many regards, nurturing, leading, teaching, and guiding the children through the years. I have seen her become a total mother bear when she felt like one of her children was being threatened unfairly. Usually, she is very mild-spoken and easy-going. We have had children that have had medical issues and spent months at a time at Duke hospital and you talk about an advocate, she was one. The doctors, even though she respected them, they did not intimidate her one bit, she willingly spoke up with her thoughts and opinions.
Over the years I have watched her Christian walk, the number of Bible Studies she has started and completed is amazing. Usually, at least two or three every year and she has passed that love for the scriptures on to the children, especially the girls. Her passion for working with the youth of the church was always foremost in her mind and she and I together spent years working with the youth groups in our various churches. Today, I see her literally spend hours at a time on the phone guiding and giving counsel to the children, boys and girls. Proverbs 31 is a chapter that describes her and others like her that I see.
The mother’s role in the development of the home and the children is such a critical role and in today’s society, I am sad to say, the addictions that are taking place have had a huge impact on our family structures. Women are facing the same addiction to alcohol and hard drugs that men are. Their bodies are being sold to pay for drugs and the sexual promiscuity abounds in many areas. We as a society need to love on and encourage our women, nurture them in our homes as they are growing up, and teach them conservative Christian values. The fathers are biblically to be the leaders of the family but the mothers are certainly the completers of the family, nothing can make a difference in the life of a child like a mother’s love for that child.
I want to encourage all of us to give thanks and encouragement to the mothers around us, to help those mothers that are struggling, to encourage them and their families to put a high priority on getting those children to church and exposing them to the Christian life and principles continually. Out here on the farm, I am blessed to see the examples of the love of the mother animals, watching the cows take care of their calves is amazing at times. The extent they will go to protect and feed those calves is at times breathtaking. I recently moved some cattle and one of the calves got left behind. That mother cow jumped the fence and walked all the way back to the barn, through the gate, waited for me to open it for her, and went and found that calf.
Let me finish this Life Lessons by saying thank you to all the godly mothers in our world, let us pray daily for them and the role that they play in the family and the lives of the children.
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Doug Harrell is a life-long resident of Mitchell County, Owner of Harrell Hill Farms, a member of Bear Creek Baptist Church, and former publisher of Blue Ridge Christian News. You can find him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/doug.harrell.77
You can read more good Christian News from Doug Harrell HERE
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