A SALUTE TO MOTHERS

There is an old saying, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." There is some truth in that.  It talks of the importance of raising children.  And mothers have a key role in that wonderful and formidable task.

During the early 70's there was a little book by Shel Silverstein called The Giving Tree.. It was the story of a boy who grew into a man and the tree that loved and sustained him. At each stage of his life he used the tree for some purpose. In the final scene he has used the tree up except for a stump upon which he sits in his tired old age. Mothers are giving people. They are people who give and give and give and give, and nurture children into adulthood.

We see important images of mothers in the Bible. Great stress is laid upon the influence of mothers. The word "mother" or "mothers" appears in the Bible almost 300 times, and the word "mother-in-law" appears 11 times and always in reference to Naomi, mother-in-law of Ruth. The phrase "And his mother was . . ." appears 20 times in II Kings and II Chronicles.  The phrase underlines the importance attached to the mothers of kings. Often the queen-mother is more honored than the queen-wife.

A mother's influence is also stressed in Ezekiel 16:44 where we read the phrase, "As is the mother, so is her daughter." The love of children was deep in the hearts of the Hebrew women, and the mother was regarded with the deepest reverence.  We think of Eve, and of Sarah, and Moses’s mother – all though the Bible, down to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Elisabeth, her older cousin, mother of John the Baptist.

But today I want us to spend some time thinking about Eunice, Timothy’s mother, and Lois, Eunices’s mother and also Timothy’s grandmother.

Timothy, assistant to Paul and a young minister in his own right, you might say, was a good person who had been raised with care and compassion. In 2 Timothy, we find that out. We don’t know a lot about Timothy’s parents, except that his mother was Jewish, and his father was Greek. Many scholars believe that his father was either dead, or had left his mother, making her a single parent. We have a lot single parents today -- but Timothy proves a child can come out okay, with extra work by the parent who is there and perhaps some help from relatives and friends.

Timothy and his mom were living with his grandmother. And as little as we know about his parents, we know even less about his grandmother except that she had a “sincere faith.” She taught her daughter well, and she taught her grandson well. What a great legacy she had.