A Maternal Love

INTRODUCTION: The second Sunday of May as we all know is celebrated as Mother’s Day. does anyone know who this is? Let me give you another hint. The founder of Mother’s Day was Miss Anna Jarvis, Anna Marie Jarvis was born on May 1, 1864, in Webster, West Virginia, but grew up in the nearby town of Grafton. She entered the Augusta Female Seminary (now Mary Baldwin College) in Staunton, Virginia, in 1881. After graduating, she taught school. In 1902 her father died, and Jarvis and her sister moved with their mother to live with relatives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Throughout her life, Jarvis had a close relationship with her mother, who not only had established local women’s clubs but also had expressed a wish to found a memorial day to honor mothers. Following her mother’s death in 1905, Jarvis began campaigning to have one day a year set aside to honor mothers. On May 12, 1907, she held a memorial service for her mother in Grafton, and by the next year, a general celebration also was held in Philadelphia to honor mothers. Within a few years, nearly all the U.S. states were celebrating Mother’s Day, and the movement quickly spread to other countries. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day a national holiday in the United States to be observed on the second Sunday of May.

Before cell phones took over the world, people use to make calls on a landline. On Mother’s Day, people make the most long-distance calls, on Father’s Day the most collected calls are made. It's easy for people to believe in this holiday because everyone has a mother. Everyone is looking for a connection. Something that feels real, attainable, and even comfortable. When I left home and begin to experience life, I would drive all the way back to Clinton for the weekend and get in my mother's bed and stay there watching Law and order, Texas Ranger Walker. I know everyone has a father, but for some reason, people have more of a connection with their mom. As a matter of fact, if you grew up in a blended family if you and your sibling had the same mother, but a different father you never referred to them as a half-brother or sister, but if your father lives separately and has another child, then they are considered your half brother or sister. It's something about that mother connection that is described as a “maternal love”.

A Maternal Bond is the relationship between a mother and her child. While typically associated with pregnancy and childbirth, a maternal bond may also develop in cases where the child is unrelated, such as adoption. But really maternal loves is when a caregiver consistently responds to an infant's needs, it sets the stage for the growing a child to enter healthy relationships with other people throughout life and to appropriately experience and express a full range of emotions.

What a better story about a mother who truly had a maternal instinct about her child than she shows in the I Samuel chapter 1 We see how SAMUEL GET HIS START AS A GREAT MAN OF GOD.

” Samuel was the son of Elkanah and Hannah, Samuel served as a priest, prophet, and judge in 1 Samuel. He was God’s instrument in Israel’s transition from the period of the judges to the monarchy, and he functioned as God’s kingmaker. Samuel anointed both Saul (1 Sam 10:1) and David (16:13). He served God faithfully during Saul’s reign but died before David took the throne. 1:21–28 Keeping her vow, Hannah dedicates Samuel to God. After he is weaned, she presents him to Eli, the priest at Shiloh, to serve in the house of God. 1:24 A lavish gift according to the standards of the Pentateuch.

“Weaned” Some hold that children were always weaned at five years of age; others, that they were not weaned till they were twelve.”

When Hannah took her 3-year-old son to the temple to entrust him to God, she could have never known God's plan for Samuel. The Scripture says, “The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and let none of his words fall to the ground ... And Samuel's word came to all Israel” (1 Samuel 3:19).

Psychologists have stated that children become acclimated to the personality of a parent no younger than the age of 5.

Hannah knew God and knew his character. When we read her prayers in the first two chapters of 1 Samuel, we hear her heart. She knows him as Lord, as God Almighty, as the giver of all gifts. She worships him, knowing who he is and who she is in his presence.

Hannah seeks God honestly and humbly in prayer. Her prayers are fervent; nothing is left unsaid. She describes her prayer as pouring out her soul in grief and great anguish. And when she is finished praying, she leaves in peace.

Hannah demonstrates her faith through obedience, even when it means an extreme personal sacrifice. She has longed for this child, and she loves him as only a mother can love a child. But her love for God is greater and she shows it by letting go of Samuel.

Hannah trusts God and that his plan for Samuel is better than her way or her plan. She may not understand it but she trusted it. Throughout her life, she had learned to wait on the Lord and trust in his sovereignty.

Hannah praises God in all circumstances. The 2nd chapter is about her prayer right after leaving her son. How must she have felt on that trip back home without him? And yet, we hear her say, “My heart exults and triumphs in the Lord; my strength is lifted up in the Lord ... There is none holy like the Lord, there is none besides You; there is no rock like our God.”

1. Mother’s prayers—“For this child, I prayed,”

1 Sam. 1:27. 2. She dressed him for the church services,

2:18–19. 3. “The child was young” when she took him,

1 Sam. 1:24. 4. She recognized God’s ownership of the child,

v. 28. 5. Hannah rejoiced over this arrangement with God,

The back cover of Dr. Brenda Hunter’s book The Power of Mother Love casts a vision for moms: “Mother love shapes cultures and individuals. While most mothers know that their love and emotional availability are vital to their children’s well-being, many of us do not understand the profound and long-lasting impact we have in developing our young children’s brains, teaching them first lessons of love, shaping their consciences … At a time when society urges women to seek their worth and personal fulfillment in things that take them away from their families and intimate bonds, Hunter invites women to come home — to their children, their best selves, their hearts.”

When you look at this from a spiritual perspective God has maternal love for each of us and He asks us to do the same for others.

In Hosea

Hosea 11:1-3( NLT) ( God described as a mother)

“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt. 2

But the more I called to him, the farther he moved from me,[a] offering sacrifices to the images of Baal and burning incense to idols. 3 I myself taught Israel[b] how to walk,

leading him along by the hand. But he doesn’t know or even care that it was I who took care of him. 4 I led Israel along with my ropes of kindness and love. I lifted the yoke from his neck, and I myself stooped to feed him.

A mother’s love needs to be given unconditionally to establish trust and a firm foundation of emotional intimacy in a child’s life.

Laura Ingalls Wilder said, “What is there in the attitude of your children toward yourself that you wish were different?

Closing

However, as the years passed, Jarvis grew disenchanted with the growing commercialization of the observation (she herself did not profit from the day) and even attempted to have Mother's Day rescinded. When Jarvis initially had the idea for what would become Mother’s Day, she envisioned a nationwide day of remembrance and togetherness, to be observed with visits (if possible) and symbolized by her own mother’s favorite flower: a white carnation. But within decades of organizing the first official Mother’s Day observance in 1908 — and successfully campaigning to get it recognized on a national level in the coming years — she grew unhappy with how the holiday had taken shape across the country.

Jarvis didn’t like greeting cards, calling them a “poor excuse for letters” preferred by “lazy people,” and she believed that candy was a meaningless gesture because “somebody other than the mother usually eats it.”

In 1935, Jarvis even traveled to Washington, D.C., to admonish the postmaster general for the release of commemorative Mother’s Day stamps, calling it “sheer commercialization,” according to the Post-Dispatch article. So how did Jarvis — who wasn’t a fan of candy, cards or even commemorative stamps — expect the nation to celebrate its mothers? Well, by going to visit her — or sending her a long, handwritten letter.

“She said, you know, if really want to do something for your mother … If you could go see her, you really should do that,” said Olive Ricketts, director of the Anna Jarvis Museum, in a 2016 interview with NPR. “But she said the second-best thing is to write her a long, handwritten letter. Don’t use other people’s words to tell your mother how you feel because they don’t really know how you feel about your mother.”

You and I need to be willing to look inside our own experiences to identify any places we may still be affected by our relationship with our own mother. We can begin that journey by simply being willing to search our hearts and better understand ourselves.