Many people have experienced great blessing, sadness, sense of loss, and unfulfilled longings related to their relationship (or lack thereof) with their own mother. I know I did when my children were still living at home. I suspect that most mothers experience all of those at various times. In the previous paragraph, I mentioned feelings of great blessing, sadness, sense of loss, and unfulfilled longings. With respect to motherhood, I suspect most mothers have at least some mixed feelings, no matter how much they appreciate the gift of children. Both sets of feelings can and should be brought into God’s presence. However, at the same time, leaders need to affirm that people come into those practices with diverse feelings, and they will have different experiences as they engage in the practices as well.Īs leaders in any setting, we have to make room for people to talk about, pray about, and think about their gratitude for the great blessings they experience, as well as the sadness, sense of loss, and unfulfilled longings they experience. In some of our online discussion we have talked about the fact that all leaders of communal spiritual practices need to lay out the goal and structure of various practices with optimism for the great experience spiritual practices offer. Right now I’m teaching an online class for Hope International University on leading communal spiritual practices. Her words conveyed such freedom and acceptance to me. For various reasons I had never liked Mother’s Day very much, and here was someone naming some of my ambivalence and struggle. My friend mentioned couples who struggle with infertility or had lost a child, women who were single and wished to be married and have children, and those who had difficult relationships with their own mothers or their children. This was the first time I heard a prayer that expressed those appropriate thanks to God, but also acknowledged that Mother’s Day is hard for some people. Over the years, I had sat through many prayers on Mother’s Day that expressed thanks to God for mothers, a good thing to do. The AHA moment: the prayer that gave permission for people to struggle on that day.Ībout 20 years ago on Mother’s Day, my good friend and colleague was leading the prayer time in the worship service. The setting: the worship service on Mother’s Day a couple of decades ago. The idea I need to spend more time pondering this linking of service to others and tending to our own formation, of loving God and loving others.An AHA moment on Mother’s Day I’ve preached on the last and will be preaching on the first in a couple of weeks, but what struck me, my aha moment was the linking of serving other and tending to our own spiritual well being. Jesus responded with loving God and loving others. My mind then wondered over to Matthew 22 where Jesus is confronted by the religious leaders and is ask what is the greatest commandment. I was sharing with him from the end of James chapter one where he talks about true religion is taking care of the orphans and widows and keeping yourself uncorrupted by the world. I was having lunch with a friend and we were talking social justice and the idea of living out our faith. As a teacher, these are the moments when your student gets the idea or concept that you are exploring. An aha moment, you know those times when something just click and you have a new thought to ponder and explore.
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