This week I saw a "mother's dictionary," and thought several of the terms worth passing along this morning:

• Family planning:
the art of spacing your children the proper distance apart to keep you on the edge of financial disaster.
• Feedback:
the inevitable result when the baby doesn't appreciate strained carrots.
• Hearsay:
what toddlers do when anyone mutters a dirty word.
• Look out:
what it's too late for your child to do by the time your scream it.
• Show off:
a child who is more talented than yours.
• Sterilize:
what you do to your first baby's pacifier by boiling it and to your last baby's pacifier by blowing on it.

On this Mother's Day, we are grateful for all the ways our mothers love us in spite of ourselves.

As you may know, a woman in Philadelphia named Anna Jarvis began a campaign in 1907 to honor mothers, for the sake of her mother. President Woodrow Wilson made the second Sunday in May an official national holiday in 1914.

And so the holiday is not found in the Bible or on the church calendar. But it is appropriate that we celebrate it on a Sunday. It is interesting that you have come to church for Mother's Day. Many of you would be here anyway, but most of you see worship as a part of your Mother's Day observance. Some of you are our guests today as you have come to worship with your mothers. Most of you wouldn't feel it was truly Mother's Day without such worship.

Our sentiment is more correct theologically than we may know. We are all familiar with God as our Father. Jesus taught us to pray to "Our Father, which art in heaven." But the original readers of Scripture were very familiar with the fact that God is our mother as well. When we explore that concept for just a few moments, we will quickly see why it is so transforming and practical for every mother and for every child today.