"You can't dog moms on Mother's Day."
That was the unspoken rule when I worked for SermonCentral.com and had to come up with 10 sermons and 10 illustrations to feature for preachers to use on Mother's Day. Of course, on Father's Day, the dads always got their teeth kicked in, but that's beside the point.
But since the holiday is a week behind us, I can say whatever I want. Reverend John S.C. Abbott was a New England pastor and historian born in 1805. He wrote histories about Davie Crocket, Napoleon Bonaparte, Christopher Carson, Peter Stuyvesant, Christopher Columbus, the Austria Empire and Russia and what it means to be a mother:
Our children have more right to expect that we shall be model parents than we have to require that they be model children.
The chief difficulty to be surmounted is the feeling which so many parents entertain that they have not time. But the mother, who feels the importance of this subject as it deserves to be felt, will find time to be faithful with her children, whatever else she may be under the necessity of neglecting.Fatal consequences attend the neglect of duty. O, there is no sin which reaches so far, and extends such wide-spreading desolation, as parental neglect. The mother who is neglecting personal effort and relying upon other influences for the formation of virtuous character in her children, will find when it is too late, that she has fatally erred.
There is no earthly influence to be compared with yours. You can never regret any amount of labor you have expended, any sacrifices you have made, any sufferings you have undergone, to train up your children…
Among the sweetest earthly joys to be experiences, is the joy of looking around upon happy and grateful children!
Let's not give our jobs to someone else. No one will care as much as we do.
"Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all." Proverbs 31:29
"Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother," (John 19:25)