It has been said that there is no greater illustration in this world of the love God has for us than that of the love a mother has for her children. Given that assertion, with which I happen to agree, I thought I would share the following piece for Mother’s Day weekend. It is titled “THE SELF-GIVING MOTHER”, and reads as follows…
About 6:00 A.M. on a Wednesday morning, James Lawson of Running Springs, California (in the San Bernardino Mountains) left home to apply for a job. About an hour later, his thirty-six-year-old wife Patsy left for her fifth grade teaching job down the mountain in Riverside - accompanied by her two children, five-year-old Susan and two-year-old Gerald - to be dropped off at the baby-sitter’s.
Unfortunately, they never got that far. Eight and a half hours later, the man found his wife and daughter dead in their wrecked car, upside down in a cold mountain stream. His two-year-old son was just barely alive in the forty-eight-degree water. But in that death, the character of a mother was revealed in a most dramatic and heart-rending way.
For when the father scrambled down the cliff to what he was sure were the cries of his dying wife, he found her locked in death, holding her little boy’s head just above water in the submerged car.
For eight and a half hours, Patsy Lawson had held her beloved toddler afloat, and had finally died, her body almost frozen in death in that position of self-giving love, holding her baby up to breathe. She died that another might live. That’s the essence of a mother’s love.
Indeed it is! And as such, it is a reflection of the self-giving and sacrificial love that our God has for us! For He, too, gave His life in order that we might live!
This mother’s Day, I am thankful for a mother who loved me enough to sacrifice on my behalf. While she was never actually called upon to lay down her life for me, she did sacrifice in so many ways that I might be the better for it.
As I write this, she is now in Heaven. I know she is there because trust she placed her trust in Jesus Christ, Who did lay down His life, for her, and for me, and for all people in all times and all places. And like her, all who will receive Him as personal Lord and Savior will enjoy their eternal reward in that wonderful place as well.
STORY SOURCE: James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois, 1988, p. 375.
About 6:00 A.M. on a Wednesday morning, James Lawson of Running Springs, California (in the San Bernardino Mountains) left home to apply for a job. About an hour later, his thirty-six-year-old wife Patsy left for her fifth grade teaching job down the mountain in Riverside - accompanied by her two children, five-year-old Susan and two-year-old Gerald - to be dropped off at the baby-sitter’s.
Unfortunately, they never got that far. Eight and a half hours later, the man found his wife and daughter dead in their wrecked car, upside down in a cold mountain stream. His two-year-old son was just barely alive in the forty-eight-degree water. But in that death, the character of a mother was revealed in a most dramatic and heart-rending way.
For when the father scrambled down the cliff to what he was sure were the cries of his dying wife, he found her locked in death, holding her little boy’s head just above water in the submerged car.
For eight and a half hours, Patsy Lawson had held her beloved toddler afloat, and had finally died, her body almost frozen in death in that position of self-giving love, holding her baby up to breathe. She died that another might live. That’s the essence of a mother’s love.
Indeed it is! And as such, it is a reflection of the self-giving and sacrificial love that our God has for us! For He, too, gave His life in order that we might live!
This mother’s Day, I am thankful for a mother who loved me enough to sacrifice on my behalf. While she was never actually called upon to lay down her life for me, she did sacrifice in so many ways that I might be the better for it.
As I write this, she is now in Heaven. I know she is there because trust she placed her trust in Jesus Christ, Who did lay down His life, for her, and for me, and for all people in all times and all places. And like her, all who will receive Him as personal Lord and Savior will enjoy their eternal reward in that wonderful place as well.
STORY SOURCE: James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois, 1988, p. 375.