Almost all the questionnaires and surveys I received during my school days have a question, “What is your mother’s profession?”  I always had a hard time to fill that one out. So, I asked my father, “What should I fill out for the question?” “Keeping the house (家管)”, he answered. I wasn’t clear what it means at that time. As I grew older, the more I think it, the more I realize how insightful it is.

I would never forget, in my younger days, how my mom takes care of our family. She gets up early every morning, wakes my brother and me up and prepares meals for us in order for us to take early morning train on time to our schools. Then she would need to wash our dirty clothes at a river near us, clean the house, do the food shopping and prepare daily meals afterwards. In addition, she would need to feel our growing pains – we come to her with our joys, our hurts and our frustrations all the times.  I can’t imagine how our life would be like without her to keep the house taking care of the family. Her tremendous effort spent in laboring and comforting for the family, however, is easily being taken for granted by us. Are we always appreciative? Not really!

This lets me think of a story told by Max Lucado, a pastor and prolific author. The story is regarding how an unappreciative daughter, who is from a small village, feels her strict parents have cheated her out of the joys of life and runs away from them to the big city Rio, Brazil.  Her mother found out the very next morning and dashed out to find her. The mom posted her pictures around the city trying to find the ran-away daughter. To her dismay, she couldn’t find the daughter and had to weep all the way home. Months later, the daughter has already worn down by life and her brown eyes no longer dance with youth but speak of pain and fear. She was longing to go back home but thought it was too late to turn back. As she slowly walked down the hotel stairs one morning, she saw a familiar face posted on the lobby mirror. Her throat tightened and eyes twitching as she walked across the room to get the photo. On the back of the photo, it writes, “”Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.” And she did.

The mother’s great effort in getting her daughter back home tells us how great a mother’s love to her child is. This is exactly what God has done for us. The hymnal authored by Eliza Hewitt, captured the calling from God. It says like this:

“Give me thy heart, give me thy heart,” 將心給我將心給我, 聽見嗎

Hear the soft whisper, wherever thou art, from this dark world He would draw thee apart; Speaking so tenderly, “Give Me thy heart.” 這隨時隨地呼召, 祂要救你脫離俗世漩渦,慈聲向你呼召, 將心給我 

My dear friends, the prophet Isaiah told us that “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 我們都如羊走迷、各人偏行己路．耶和華使我們眾人的罪孽都歸在祂身上。(Isaiah 53:6)” God loves us and He prepares a way of deliverance – His only begotten son Jesus Christ – for us to reconcile with Him. Just as the mother wrote, “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.“, we can boldly “come as we are 照我們的本相” to receive God’s love – acknowledge that we are all sinners and receive His son Jesus as our personal savior.

Someone once said, “Being a mom is a sacred partnership with God”, on this Mother’s Day, let’s remember our mother’s love and most importantly how great our God’s love is.