M FOR MOTHER

M FOR MOTHER

RBC Ministries publishes a useful daily devotional Our Daily Bread which I enjoy reading each day. On Mother's Day the devotional was entitled "Magnets and Mothers" and described a school teacher who gave her second grade class a test. One of the questions dealt with magnets and read "My name has six letters. The first one is M. I pick up things. What am I?" The teacher was surprised to see that almost fifty percent of the students didn't write "magnet" but, instead wrote "mother." Mothers do pick up things and perform an enormous number of other jobs the great majority of which go unnoticed and unappreciated.

Someone once said that a mother's job is like the railroad tracks. They just seem to go on forever.  In lawsuits for the negligent death of a mother, lawyers have hired economist who review all of the roles that mother's assume and calculate the value if those had to be done by someone who was hired to do them. The cost is always staggering when you figure just basic things like laundry, cleaning,cooking, house care and so on. The government calculates the value of people for various reasons, but no one can calculate the intangible value of a mother to a child. Those of us who had devoted mothers who nurtured and cared for us were blessed. At seventy four years of age I still remember that when I was in trouble or had needs it was mother I went to for help. I could count on her. I remember many of the the things she said to me today. One in particular I think about everytime I have a messy job. She would say "you can always wash your hands when you are done Paul."

So here's to mothers everywhere, both living and dead.

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