The second Sunday in May, across all fifty of these United States, is a day set aside each year to honor mothers. Here in our little corner of Northeast Texas, New Hope Baptist Church did just that on May 12th.

Our pastor, Bro. Tony Pierce, began the morning worship service by sharing a few words of gratitude for his own mother and acknowledging the immeasurable impact she’s had on his life.  He then welcomed and recognized all the mothers present that morning: mothers of long-standing, well-practiced and richly experienced; brand-new mommies just beginning the motherhood journey; the adoptive mothers who love and cherish another woman’s child as their very own; moms who briefly carried a child within whom they never got to raise; in short, all those ladies who proudly wear the badge of motherhood. The church family presented each mother with a small gift of appreciation.

A special recognition was given to the mommy with the youngest child, the mother who has most recently adopted a child, the mom whose own mother has most recently gone home to Heaven, and the mother who has been a Christian for the most years.

The Sunday morning message also honored mothers reminding us that they are a vital, irreplaceable component of God’s perfect design for the family unit. The love connection between a mother and her child is like no other in its depth, its fierceness, its selflessness, its persistence, and its permanence. A mother’s love is God-originated, and many generations of moms’ prayers, fueled by that matchless love, have gone ahead of their children on life’s unpredictable path.

As we exited the building after the service ended, we emerged into a day transformed. What had begun as just one more of many gray, cloudy, sloppy, unsettled days had ripened into a day of bright sunshine and white cloud puffs chasing each other across a triumphantly blue sky. . .God’s way of saying, “Happy Mother’s Day, ladies!”