Where Does a Mother's Love Come From?

Read This: “Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God.” 1 John 4:7

Think: You don’t have to have kids to know that caring for them is the most demanding job in the world. It’s physically exhausting, emotionally draining, and all consuming. In many ways, motherhood represents the kind of sacrificial and unconditional love we long for—that person who is willing to give up everything for us, who is always there, and forever our number one fan. And that is a great picture of the way God loves us.

The only unfailing, never ending, everlasting, completely pure source of love is God’s love. Jesus gave up his throne and the perfection of Heaven for a barn and a job as a carpenter. Why? Because in God’s eyes we are worth whatever price he had to pay. We didn’t earn that love; he loved us to the moon and back and beyond before we took our first breath. He is there to comfort us in our pain, calm our fears, cheer us on through our trials, and always has arms wide open no matter how badly we’ve behaved.

Truthfully mothers are only human and often the pedestal we put them on is unrealistic. Just like the rest of us, sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they don’t. God is the only source of perfect, sacrificial, and unconditional love. It’s only by his grace we are able to reflect that same love to others. It’s not always easy, and sometimes we have to dig deep in Christ to find the strength to reflect who God is to those who are difficult. But whether you’re a mother, father, daughter, son, husband, wife, friend, or neighbor “we love because he loved us first” (1 John 4:19).

Ask: Who in your life has been an example of God’s unconditional love to you? How has that help mold you into the person you are today? Who do you know who needs to experience that same kind of love? How can you be that example to them?

Pray: Praise God for your mother and the part she had in bringing you to the place you are now. Thank him for sacrificing everything to redeem us and loving us no matter what. Ask him to give you the discernment and strength to love others with that same love.