Celebrating Mother’s Day is a great, common grace, custom, which motivates us to fulfil the second half of the fifth commandment, “Honor your mother,” and fulfill the calling of Proverbs 31: 28, “Her children rise up and call her a blessing in their lives.” It is also a great time to celebrate the glory of God’s design of human beings as “male and female,” two different genders to COMPLETE each other (Gen 1:27).
Despite the widespread celebration of Mother’s Day, the other 364 days of the year, stay-at- home moms suffer from the devaluation of motherhood by many voices in our culture. The example of womanhood being held up as a role model for our daughters nearly always focuses on their career (especially if that career is one that is traditionally male). Yet, motherhood is a glorious, foundational part of the feminine design. Genesis 3:20 says, "The man called his wife’s name, Eve, because she was the mother of all the living" (Gen. 3:20). “Eve” sounds like Hebrew for life-giver and resembles the word for living. In their recent book, The Grand Design, authors Owen Strachen and Gavin Peacock write:
For their part, women are life-givers. Women give physical life to humanity, a task so great and so significant that it cannot be quantified. God has highly esteemed women by making the survival of the human race hang on their care and nurture. There is immense fulfillment and meaning for women in this truth.
The demeaning of motherhood that accompanies the denial of gender differences and roles is primarily a phenomenon of modern western culture, where birth control is widespread and infant mortality is low. Throughout the rest of the world and human history, a married woman could expect to be pregnant much of the time from age 13-45. Because God’s motherhood design, the highest of callings, exposes her to sickness and special vulnerability during pregnancy, how perfect of God to design her partner to have the capacity and calling to be her provider (avad) and protector (shamar). That is exactly what Genesis 2:15 tells us Adam was created for. What an awesome God we serve to design male and female this way! Mother’s Day is a great day to praise our mothers and wives; but also a day to fall down and worship God for the glory of his design of man and woman to COMPLETE each other as his image bearers!
Yet, there is a caveat. Whenever we celebrate God’s design of motherhood, we need to also deepen our compassion for those women who would love to be mothers, but are not. Not being a mother doesn’t mean a woman is less caring or nurturing—less feminine, any more than being single makes a man less masculine. But that is usually not the way she feels. This week, I was discussing with a thirty-five year-old, single, Christian woman, research that shows women getting pregnant well into their forties. She casually mentioned that this was HER hope. That off-handed statement went like a knife to my heart. I had not realized how real a single woman’s struggle is with the fact that her biological clock is running out without any possibility of being married within sight.
As glorious as motherhood is, this calling is NOT a woman’s only calling. Every woman has been gloriously endowed with a multitude of gifts and talents. At the core of masculinity is always a commitment to helping our wives, daughters, and sisters fulfill all their glorious potential. Sometimes, Christians romanticize marriage and family life, believing the lie that the calling to singleness can’t be a GOOD calling from God. Thoughtlessly, we can see singleness as a parenthesis until a person enters marriage. How hurtful. The church can focus so much on the family unit that single MEMBERS OF OUR CHURCH FAMILY feel like they don’t even belong there. How cruel.
Lord, help us both recover the celebration of the glory of YOUR feminine design of motherhood and go out of our way to love and affirm the value of our unmarried or childless sisters, who hurt whenever the topic of motherhood comes up.
