given on Mothers Day, May 13, 2012
Mothers everywhere have learned to follow a routine to maintain the family’s heartbeat. The household has to run smoothly, the meals have to be prepared, and the laundry needs doing, too. Those are just the three primary maintenance issues, but the list goes on. Listening to the days affairs whether from the father or the kids, disciplining the kids, making sure the pets immunizations are up to date, and the list continues.
Managing the ebb and flow of the home takes organization and time management. Over the years, a routine becomes established in the home and each person knows his or her expectations. Glynnis Whitwer, when she listed this schedule on her blog Titus2 At the Well, said, “For a hundred years, a homemaker’s week looked something like this:
Monday: Wash Day
Tuesday: Ironing Day
Wednesday: Sewing Day (or mending)
Thursday: Market Day (or gardening)
Friday: Cleaning Day
Saturday: Baking Day
Sunday: Day of Rest
Today’s mothers have added so much more to the weekly schedule—as the technology advanced to ease the tasks.
Whitwer continued her discussion asking very simple yet thought-provoking questions:
- Can [this schedule] work in my life?
- Can it work in a world with ever-changing activities and endless entertainment opportunities?
These are questions that connect us to the wisdom of mothers since mothers began taking care of families.
Mothers have long followed the patterns of the generations before in order to provide for the needs of their families, to care for their spouses, and to raise their children in a God-centered home. The love they had is the love God has for all of us. They accepted each one with love and grace, just like God accepted each of us with love and grace.
Mothers’ grace is God’s grace here on earth.
When we observe mothers loving their children despite the mistakes they make, we see God’s grace in action. When we hear mothers’ pleas for God’s care when one is sick, we know God’s love will listen. When a mother prays for intercession for a prodigal child, we know that God’s care is walking with that child.
Prayer is one of the most useful tools mothers have as they practice grace and stay God-centered while meeting the demands of the world and the trials of raising a family. Prayer helps mothers find answers with God’s helps. Prayers help mothers hold on to hope. Prayers give mothers patience. Prayers demonstrate a mother’s grace or unconditional love for a child or all children of God.
God does the same thing. He loves all of us unconditionally. He has the same concerns when any one of us leaves the protection of our homes. He has the same sense of loss when one of us becomes a prodigal child. He hurts just like we do when one of us is sick or injured. God’s grace makes each and every one of us an important child loved by God—as much or even more than by our mothers.
Bev L. shared another version of the daily schedule, but this one has an additional element—prayers. For each day and each task, there is a prayer that mothers may use to keep their own lives God-centered. These prayers show how even the weekly schedules in our mothers’ lives can help them grow in their faith:
Monday Wash Day
Lord, help me wash away all my selfishness and
Vanity, so I may serve you with perfect humility
Through the week ahead.
Tuesday Ironing Day
Dear Lord, help me iron out a33 the wr5n23es
Of prejudice I have collected through the years
So that I may see the beauty in others.
Wednesday Mending Day
O God, help me men my ways so I will not
Set a bad example for others.
Thursday Cleaning Day
Lord Jesus, help me to dust out all the many faults
I have been hiding in the secret corners of my heart.
Friday Shopping Day
O God, give me the grace to shop wisely
So I may purchase eternal happiness
For myself and all others
In need of love.
Saturday Cooking Day
Help me, my Savior, to brew a big kettle of brotherly
Love and serve it with clean, sweet bread of human kindness.
Sunday The Lord’s Day
O God, I have prepared my house for you.
Please come into my heart so I may spend the day
and the rest of my life in your presence.
Today’s mothers still have to find a way to manage the household and raise the kids, but the demands of jobs outside the home are often more time consuming leaving less and less time to get those chores done. Thank goodness the advances in technology assist them to get the chores done in a more timely manner.
Today, as you rest, do not look at the next set of chores to be done. You have been demonstrating God’s grace each time you do those chores and pray for the well-being of the family, their friends, and more. You are demonstrating grace just like God demonstrates grace to each of us. You demonstrate God’s grace in each chore that you do and in each prayer that say.
Dear All Loving God,
Thank you for your grace as our mothers have shown us.
Thank you for being by our mothers as they struggle with the daily chores
of keeping up the housework and raising the kids.
Thank you for our mothers whose unconditional love never waivered.
Help us each to understand how our earthly mothers took grace
and made it the very example of your grace.
Let us follow in their footsteps even today.
Let us know that with each set of footsteps our mothers make
a second set of footsteps even under hers.
Let your unconditional love give us the strength and the courage
to continue following the patterns of loving, gracious mothers
generation after generation.
Amen.
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