Erma Bombeck was above all a mother. Here's how she describes Mother's Day breakfast in her home: "A mixer whirs, out of control, then stops abruptly as a voice cries, 'I'm telling.' A dog barks and another voice says, 'Get his paws out of there. Mom has to eat that!' Minutes pass and finally, 'Dad! Where's the chili sauce?' Then, 'Don't you dare bleed on Mom's breakfast!' The rest is a blur of banging doors, running water, rapid footsteps and a high pitched, 'YOU started the fire! YOU put it out!'" And breakfast arrives.

"Later in the day, after you have decided it's easier to move to a new house than clean the kitchen, you return to your bed where, if you're wise, you'll reflect on this day. For the first time, your children have given instead of received. They have offered up to you the sincerest form of flattery: trying to emulate what you do for them."

Erma is exactly right—your children will emulate you. Though bleeding on Mom's breakfast is not the image I hope you remember from this message.

Tony Campolo's homemaker wife was attending a faculty gathering at the University of Pennsylvania with her professor husband. A sociologist confronted her with the question, "And what is that you do, my dear?" Here's her reply: "I am socializing two homo sapiens in the dominant values of the Judeo-Christian tradition in order that they might be instruments for the transformation of the social order into the teleologically prescribed utopia inherent in the eschaton." Wow.

That's what mothers do—they "socialize homo sapiens." Not just intellectually or emotionally or physically, but spiritually. It's this latter role which I want us to explore for a few minutes today. Here's my one point: every Timothy has a Eunice, and probably a Lois. Let me show you what that sentence means, and why it matters enormously to your life and mine.