In the US we are seeing trees and flowers bloom, and grass turning green, thanks to an abundance of recent rain.  I enjoy looking at all the beautiful foliage and flowers, but must admit I am not the best gardener when it comes to plants. 

Jon and I were married for eight years before our first and only child, Bethany, was born. She is now 29 years old!  She was born prematurely, unexpectedly, so I felt somewhat unprepared for motherhood at first.  Thankfully her medical issues were not extremely serious, and after two weeks in the NICU we took her home.  This happened while we missionaries in Kenya, so we were extremely grateful they had the medical expertise and technology to help with her breathing difficulties.  Whether your children are biological or adopted, the real “labor” begins when you bring them home.   

In many ways, the work of a mom is like a gardener. 

A gardener must prepare the soil, and as a parent we want our hearts prepared so we can be a good influence on our children.  We want to teach our children to look to God to confess their sins and keep short sin accounts.  God works in our lives to plow the ground of our hearts so we are ready to receive the seeds of His word.

Gardeners plant the seeds, and as moms we want to plant the seeds of God’s word not only in our children’s hearts but our own as well.  Reading His word and then memorizing it helps to get those seeds in the ground.  A good gardener must wait and be patient, because we don’t see a harvest immediately after planting.

A gardener and a mom must both water the garden, especially in times when there is no rain.  Sometimes we water the garden with our tears.  You know as a parent there are good times and hard times.  We can feel frustration, failure and hopelessness.  Those are the times we need to cry out to God for help.  We can use his phone number, Jeremiah 33:3, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things that thou knowest not.”

A good gardener must also weed her garden.  We have to watch out for those weeds.  They can slip in so quickly.  As a parent we need to watch for some of these things that Ephesian 4:31 describes, “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice.”  We need to make sure we are not becoming overgrown with weeds, and we can help our children, through God’s word, pull these weeds up at the root.

The favorite time of gardening is harvest time, when we see the fruit of our labors.  We know that we are laborers together with God in the task of rearing children.  We need to do our best and trust God to give the increase. 

There are two ladies who are some of the beautiful flowers in God’s garden.  These women did not have children of their own, but they had the influence of a mother in the lives of countless children.

Gladys Aylward, a British lady, was a missionary in China in the 1930s.  She was rejected by the mission board and told she was not qualified because was too old (at 27) to learn the language!  She went anyway, working as a servant to pay her own way.  She partnered with another missionary lady, became a foot inspector to stop the practice of foot binding, and adopted five children of her own.  She ended up with 100 children that needed help during the war and led them many miles over mountains and through rivers to get to safety.  She had a mother’s heart and could never turn any child away.  She sowed into their lives endurance, hope, love and the truth that anything is possible with God.

Another flower from God’s garden is Amy Carmichael.  Another British lady, she went to India in the early 1900s.  Over her many years in India she struggled with health problems.  She was one of the first to dress like the Indian women so she could blend in and find out what was happening in the temples with the children that were taken there.  She rescued and took in hundreds of children that needed help.  She had a home and a school for girls and boys in India.  She said that she came to the point where it was difficult to think of exchanging the title of “missionary” for that of “amma”, or mother, but she wondered, “Could that be the real missionary work God had for her in India?”  She was willing for God to use her as a mother to those that society considered useless and worthless. 

Maybe you are not a mother to your own children, but maybe you fulfill the role of “mama” to some of those you work with?  As mothers, we partner with God and others in the cultivation of our children.  We prepare the soil, plant, water, weed, and pray to one day reap a good harvest.  We are blessed to have the examples of others and God’s word to give us wisdom in this important task!

Pam Konnerup