Carol Peterson, May A Month On Mothers, Parents concerned for their children, Trusting God »

God’s perfect plan is for people to live together in intact families, with one father and one mother who love each other and love and care for their children, following His commands and loving Him. Unfortunately that plan is not always the way our earthly lives works out. Even in families who stay together, often family members feel forsaken; misunderstood; lacking in love, with emotional, physical or spiritual needs unmet. Too often we feel forsaken by the very parents who are supposed to love us.

It is not fair. It is not right. It is not godly. But it is often fact. And because so much of our sense of worth is based on the love we receive, especially from our parents, when we are forsaken by them, we feel unworthy.

Fortunately, God loves us through it all.

Though my father and mother forsake me,

The LORD will receive me. (Psalm 27:10)

The New Testament has a lot say about faith, dispelling old ideas about “religion” that shows people as outwardly godly but inwardly lacking righteousness. But one thing is clear from the Book of James. When we look after orphans and widows, our faith is pure and undefiled before God. God has His eye especially upon the orphan and the widow.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (James 1:27)

To God we are all His children. He desires us to walk with Him daily, to experience and live in His presence. He has placed this need for a relationship with Him deep within each of us. When we are apart from Him we can feel the pain and the loss. When we are not close to God, we are spiritual orphans.

God loves us as His children. It is therefore natural that He should also desire us to look after each other, not only in spiritual matters, but also to care for worldly orphans in real and concrete ways. For the orphan—and for the person who did not have the mother or father she needed as a child, God wants us to know that we are not left as spiritual orphans. We still have a Heavenly Father. And He will never forsake us.

If our earthly father or mother was unloving or absent, it may be hard to feel comforted by the knowledge that we have a Heavenly Father. If we open our hearts to the understanding though, it should make the comparison that much stronger. We didn’t have a godly earthly father or mother for our short, temporary lives here on earth. We do have a godly Heavenly Father. Forever.

Our mother gave us life here on this earth. Our lives were made possible by our Heavenly Father. Should our earthly parents forsake us, we can take heart from Psalm 27:10. God will receive us.

Regardless of our status within our earthly family, all of us are orphans when we are apart from God. As His children, He is our Heavenly Father and He will never forsake us. And as members of His family, we take our true worth from Him.

Praise God because you are wondrously made! You are His child and He loves you eternally.

Additionally, even if we did not have the type of mothering we needed as a child, if God gives us children of our own, then we have the opportunity to be the type of mother we didn’t have. It’s a tough job. There are no classes that teach the emotional and spiritual depths needed to mother. But when we rely on God’s strength and on His example of unconditional love, we can be the mother we never had.

 
Carol Peterson

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