May 5, 2016

The Amazing Love of Mothers

A compilation

Audio length: 8:24
Download Audio (7.7MB)

A mother’s love is like a circle; it has no beginning and no ending. It keeps going around and around, ever expanding, touching everyone who comes in contact with it. Engulfing them like the morning’s mist, warming them like the noontime sun, and covering them like a blanket of evening stars. A mother’s love is like a circle; it has no beginning and no ending.—Art Urban

Motherhood is a hard job! There’s just no way to make it easy. It takes the strength of Samson, the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job, and the faith of Abraham! He had an awful lot of faith: He was the father of faith and the father of the faithful. It also takes the love of God, that’s for sure! And you could also say the insight of Daniel and the courage of David. At least the administrative ability of David, that’s for sure. David was a fighter, and it takes a lot of fight to be a mother. What a job!

I think motherhood is just about the biggest calling in the world, the greatest calling in the world! Mothers of the next generation. They are the ones that are molding the future. The world of tomorrow is what the mothers of today make it, according to the way they raise their children.

They used to say, “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” And that’s the truth! My mother had the greatest influence over me of anybody in my whole life.—David Brandt Berg

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.—Abraham Lincoln

Men are what their mothers made them.—Ralph Waldo Emerson

The future destiny of the child is always the work of the mother.—Napoleon Bonaparte

A little boy went up to his mother and he handed her a piece of paper that he had been writing on. This is what it said:

For cutting the grass: $5.00
For cleaning my room this week: $1.00
For going to the store for you: $.50
Baby-sitting my kid brother while you went shopping: $.25
Taking out the garbage: $1.00
For getting a good report card: $5.00
For cleaning up and raking the yard: $2.00
Total owed: $14.75

Well, his mother looked at him standing there expectantly, and you could see the memories flashing through her mind. So she picked up the pen, turned over the paper he’d written on, and this is what she wrote:

For the nine months I carried you while you were growing inside me, no charge.
For all the nights that I’ve sat up with you, doctored you and prayed for you, no charge.
For all the trying times, and all the tears through the years, there’s no charge.
For all the nights that were filled with dread, and for the worries I knew were ahead, no charge.
For the toys, food, clothes, and even wiping your nose, there’s no charge, son.
And when you add it all up, the full cost of real love is no charge.

When he finished reading what his mother had written, there were great big tears in his eyes, and he looked straight up at his mother and said, “Mom, I sure do love you.” And then he took the pen and in great big letters he wrote: “ALREADY PAID.”—M. Adams, adapted¹

A mother is the truest friend we have. When trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us, when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.—Washington Irving

Mother is the bank where we deposit all our hurts and worries.—Author unknown

Don’t nothin’ come before my kids. My kids always come first. If I had food and I didn’t have enough, I would let them eat first. If they left anything, I’d eat. If they didn’t, I would just wait until next time.—Lillie Jackson

She broke the bread into two fragments and gave them to the children, who ate with avidity.
“She hath kept none for herself,” grumbled the sergeant.
“Because she is not hungry,” said a soldier.
“Because she is a mother,” said the sergeant.—Victor Hugo

There were two warring tribes in the Andes, one that lived in the lowlands and the other high in the mountains. The mountain people invaded the lowlanders one day, and as part of their plundering of the people, they kidnapped a baby of one of the lowlander families and took the infant with them back up into the mountains.

The lowlanders didn’t know how to climb the mountain. They didn’t know any of the trails that the mountain people used, and they didn’t know where to find the mountain people or how to track them in the steep terrain. Even so, they sent out their best party of fighting men to climb the mountain and bring the baby home.

The men tried first one method of climbing and then another. They tried one trail and then another. After several days of effort, however, they had climbed only several hundred feet. Feeling hopeless and helpless, the lowlander men decided that the cause was lost, and they prepared to return to their village below.

As they were packing their gear for the descent, they saw the baby’s mother walking toward them. They realized that she was coming down the mountain that they hadn’t figured out how to climb. And then they saw that she had the baby strapped to her back. How could that be?

One man greeted her and said, “We couldn’t climb this mountain. How did you do this when we, the strongest and most able men in the village, couldn’t do it?”

She shrugged her shoulders and said, “It wasn’t your baby.”—Jim Stovall²

Published on Anchor May 2016. Read by Jon Marc. Music by Michael Dooley.

¹ http://www.frtommylane.com/stories.htm.

² You Don’t Have to Be Blind to See (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004), copied from http://storiesforpreaching.com.

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