A happy Mother’s Day to everyone! In our exposition of 2nd Peter we have been camped out in 3:1-2 and have been examining the tendency we have to settle and to forget the things of God. 2nd Timothy 1:3-7 says this: “I thank God, whom I serve with a pure conscience, as my forefathers did, as without ceasing I remember you in my prayers night and day…when I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also. Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you…”

        Interestingly the apostle Paul, in his own deathbed epistle, also zeroes in on our tendency to settle. And because today is Mother’s Day these verses got me thinking about settling and stirring and their connection to motherhood. I remembered having to clean my room or do my homework when I would have rather been settled doing whatever it was that I was doing. And I came across the text of a letter written by the Scottish essayist and historian, Thomas Carlyle, to his mother. This letter, found in Carlyle’s personal papers after his death, bore the inscription: “My last letter to my mother.”

        My dear, good mother,

        Let it be ever a comfort to you, however weak you are, that you did your part honorably and well while in strength, and were a noble mother to me and to us all. I am now myself grown old, and have had various things to do and suffer for so many years, but there is nothing I ever had to be so much thankful for as the mother I had. That is a truth which I know well, and perhaps this day again it may be some comfort to you. Yes, surely, for if there has been good in the things I have uttered in the world’s hearing, it was your voice essentially that was speaking through me; essentially what you and my brave father meant and taught me to mean, this was the purport of all I spoke and wrote. And if in the few years that may remain to me I am to get any more written for the world, the essence of it, so far as it is worthy and good, will still be yours. May God reward you, my dearest mother, for all you have done for me! I never can.

        Timothy could be thankful to God for the role that both his grandmother and mother played in his spiritual development. While I realize that Mother’s Day can stir up a variety of emotions, thoughts, and memories I trust that all of us will take this day, and maybe not in words as eloquent as those of Thomas Carlyle, but in the same spirit of his letter, remember the role our mothers have played in our lives and thank God for His sovereignty in giving us the mother He gave us.

        Pastor John