David d’Lima
Mother’s Day each year provides a helpful opportunity for God’s people to gain refreshment concerning biblical Christian concepts of mothering in the family, church and nation.
Mother’s Day is observed by more than 40 nations globally in celebration of God’s gift of motherhood. Coherent with the Fifth Commandment – honour your mother and father – Mother’s Day was first celebrated in 1907 when Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother at St Andrew’s Church in Grafton, West Virginia. Thanks be to God for that woman who single-handedly pioneered a day that (in 1914) was proclaimed by President Woodrow Wilson as a national holiday to honour mothers. There we see the power of one woman who changed the world!
One of the great benefits of Mother’s Day (like every annual tradition) is the calendrical reminder to revere motherhood – helping households, faith communities and entire countries renew our commitment to the contribution of women. The wearing of white carnations underscores the importance of a day which, rightly understood, honours women in the family, church and nation.
Mothering in the family
The starting point in honouring mothers is to recognise all new human life commences inside women, who carry the growing little one with much discomfort and sacrifice, culminating in a delivery characterised by pain and enormous vigour! Although men traditionally were excluded from observing and assisting, fathers today are encouraged to brace themselves and support their women. Such men surely emerge from the encounter with far greater appreciation – including for their own mothers.
Birthing generally progresses rapidly towards the tenderness of breast feeding, which similarly can only be witnessed but never experienced by men. Doubtless that nourishing and bonding activity induces young children to prefer the comfort given by mother rather than by father.
Unfortunately, the conscription of young mothers into the paid workforce, largely against their instincts, has hugely stressed families as children are pushed into childcare. That problem since the 1990s received the tacit agreement of church leaders who effectively are complicit with the wicked policies of governments that impose increased workforce participation at the price of family well-being. Society unfortunately has long farewelled the ‘living wage’ by which a ‘breadwinner’ could support his wife and children, and whereby one typical income comfortably serviced the repayments for a typical house.
Hence the disturbing trend towards couples having smaller families, or sometimes electing to bear no children – again with complicity of church and state.
It’s well past time that our pastors and civic authorities commended and defended motherhood as a crucial ministry.
As an old saying reminds us: If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.
Mothers in the church
Unfortunately, many young mothers in modern churches are far from happy as they frequently struggle and are denied the traditional support given by their own mothers and by neighbours, maiden aunts and senior women in the faith. Women across the centuries who traditionally had time and energy to encourage young struggling mothers are now fully preoccupied by frenetic activity in the paid workforce. That situation totally contradicts biblical teaching:
Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home (Titus 2:3-5).
A woman’s love for husband and children invariably becomes strained by the challenges of life, but it may be rescued and revived by mothers in the church. That process can only prosper the movement of the gospel across generations.
While studies indicate the paramount value of fathers in the transmission of faith, we also recognise how mothers also help impart Christian conviction. Hence Paul rejoiced to write:
I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also (2 Timothy 1:5).
Paul praised the mother of Rufus – who has been a mother to me also (Romans 16:13).
The Apostle also applied maternal metaphor when encouraging the believers at Galatia: for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth (Galatians 4:19).
Having noted the value of motherhood in the family and in the church, we now apply the concept to women helping to shape national life.
Mothers in the nation
Scripture in two instances powerfully commends the involvement of women as mothers to the nation.
Firstly we learn about Deborah – who “arose as a mother in Israel” (Judges 5:7). That prophetically-gifted woman made an outstanding contribution as a national liberator. Although she declared her preference that the princes should have risen to the challenge, in their absence Almighty God commissioned Deborah to deliver the nation.
Secondly we read about the un-named mother of King Lemuel – whose words of instruction to her son are preserved in Proverbs 31. As Queen Mother she exhorted Lemuel towards personal integrity along with governing justly.
It should however be recognised that any interpretation of her words to require donations of royal alcohol to impoverished peasants would be a gross misunderstanding of hyperbole in the Queen Mother’s advice against kingly over-indulgence!
Be that as it may, the passage helpfully influenced the well-known poem by William Ross Wallace – The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Rules the World. That delightful poem features the line Blessings on the hand of women, fathers, sons and daughters cry – paraphrasing Proverbs 31:28 – her children arise and call her blessed, her husband also and he praises her.
The biblical passage concludes with the following exhortation: Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.
The town gateway was the locus of civic leadership and public reckoning, wherein the husband of the wife of noble character takes his seat among the elders of the land (31:23). The gateway provided the ideal place to commend worthy women. Modern civic recognitions of motherhood, including Mother’s Day and the FamilyVoice Mother of the Year award, are therefore consistent with Scripture.
FamilyVoice Australia and the Mother of the Year award
FamilyVoice since 2021 has annually celebrated its Mother of the Year award, upholding the ministry’s long-standing interest in the importance of motherly ministry in the family, church and nation. Winners to date are as follows:
Leila Abdallah (2021) for her remarkable forgiveness and strength after the tragic manslaughter of three of her children, highlighting the profound impact of maternal love and resilience;
Pauline Hanson (2022) for defending pro-family policies nationally, having raised four children as a single mother;
Kirralie Smith (2023) for her role in home-schooling, fostering, and the promotion of traditional family values through her Binary organisation;
Joanna Howe (2024) for outstanding advocacy of the rights of unborn babies;
Kerrie Hogg (2025) for extending the gift of motherhood to traumatised children.
While the award to Senator Pauline Hanson prompted howls of outrage by her critics, she has rightly called governments to account and has advantaged our civic culture – at the price of political persecution leading to unjust imprisonment.
She was particularly ridiculed having said: “I care so passionately about this country, it’s like I’m its mother, Australia is my home and the Australian people are my children”.
That assertion is akin to the sentiment expressed by our Lord Jesus, who (according to Luke 13:34) perceived in the devoted mother hen an example of his own great love for Jerusalem’s children.