The Need for Nurturers

The essence of motherhood is to nurture life.

Getting pregnant and delivering a baby doesn’t make you a mother. And just because you haven’t brought a new life into the world or do not have the ability to bring life, that doesn’t keep you from being a mother.

Whether or not you qualify as a mother depends on the degree to which you nurture life in your child.

In Scripture, good mothers foster life in their children. The Bible strongly condemns the evil practices of Israel’s neighbors, some of whom sacrificed their firstborn children to their fertility gods. Even the Greeks had tales of mothers slaughtering their children, such as in the tale of Medea, in which Medea kills her two sons to get revenge on Jason who left her for the princess of Corinth. But in the Bible the slaughter of innocents was the work of evil men—men like Pharaoh and Herod.

What does nurturing life in a child involve? It involves work in many areas.

Providing Nourishment

One of the saddest pictures in the Bible comes from the rubble of Jerusalem after it had been destroyed by the Babylonians: “…infants and babies faint in the streets of the city. They cry to their mothers, ‘Where is bread and wine?’ as they faint like a wounded man in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out on their mothers' bosom.” The children instinctively went to their mothers for nourishment and life. God created us in such a way that the mother nurses her child.  As the children grow, it is the mother, usually, who prepares the meals and sees that they get fed.

Providing Instruction

The wise man said, “Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck” (Prov. 1:8-9). And again, “My son, keep your father's commandment, and forsake not your mother's teaching” (Prov. 6:20). In another place he wrote, “A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother” (Prov. 10:1). Instruction begins in the home. If mothers and fathers neglect this sacred duty, who is left to guide their children in the right direction?

Providing Spiritual Guidance

How many of us would not be Christians if it were not for a godly mother or wife? Timothy owed his “sincere faith” to his grandmother and mother. Paul says, “It dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, it dwells in you as well” (2 Tim. 1:5). They had taught him the sacred writings from childhood (2 Tim. 3:15).

Robert Taylor, Jr., told a story about a visit to a Christian home to which an eighty-four-year-old Christian lady had also been invited.  He was speaking to her as the three children of the hosts were playing on the floor. She remarked, “I wish my children were this age again.” At first Taylor thought she was longing for the good times she had when she was a young mother. But she then explained that she had only been a Christian for four years. When her children were young and impressionable, she was not interested in the Lord. Now that she was a Christian, her children were too old and set in their ways for her influence to be very effective. They were not Christians, and none of her grandchildren were Christians. Her remark expressed her regret—if only her children were young again! She could have an opportunity to be a Christian mother when it really mattered.

The wise man says, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6).  If you have young children, don’t waste those impressionable years.  Your influence is strong now.  Use it to bring them the spiritual guidance they need!

Drew Kizer