Mother's Day

Hubby was on the clock 19 hours Saturday. Granted, that will be the longest day of his summer work, but his weekend work is definitely not over.

He handled it pretty well, better than I expected. He was soooo tired, but he actually made it to church Sunday morning. He missed Sunday School (I'll let him slide), but he came to the service. I think he did it because his parents were here. So we were all in church together. It was very nice given the fact that his parents have all but stopped going to church. We're not sure why, but they just won't go. It's hard to do much about it when they live in another state, but we do pray for them.

It was also nice for the whole family to be together at church Sunday because it was Mother's Day. I wonder if all the sermons across this country were the same. The one I heard was about three upstanding women of the Bible. Moses' mother, John Mark's mother, and Timothy's mother/grandmother. We were told how mothers can impact generations and are the very best caretakers for their children. This is true.

So why do these holidays always make me sad? Because I start looking around our small congregation thinking about people's situations. I can't go into them all, but just in the immediate group around me, there was one lady who had not spoken to her mother in over a year, and there was a teenager whose mother had walked out when she was a baby and left her to be raised by grandma. That is just two cases that I knew about, I'm sure there were more that I didn't know about. And there's never any mention in the sermon about what these people are supposed to do with these "I Despise My Mother" feelings.

I feel the same way on Father's Day. I don't know about your church, but even though mine is very small, there are only a couple of families who are not blended; over half the kids at our church miss every other Sunday because they are at Daddy's. No matter, on Father's Day, the sermon will be on how dads are great and wonderful and the anchor in the home.

I would like to hear a sermon about how the family really is. Screwed. Preach to us about how to stop the cycles of abuse/addiction/poverty. Preach to us about how to accept God's grace and how to love each other no matter how our earthly parents treated us. Preach to us about how our church is only as strong as the weakest family in it.

I love my church and I love and respect my pastor, but sometimes these holiday sermons are just too sugarcoated. What about your Mother's day sermon?