FROM THE CHURCH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 44, 15 May 1950, Page 4

FROM THE CHURCH

Whakatane St John’s Methodist

“MOTHERHOOD IN GOD”

In speaking on the subject of “Motherhood in God,” the Rev. Wm. C. Jenkin said in the St John’s Methodist Church last night that while the most priceless inheritance into which our age has entered, in its Godward thought is the truth of the Divine Fatherhood there are some aspects of the character of God which, to our human approach, find a perfect symbol in “Motherhood” which are less vivdly realised under,the figure of Fatherhood. Continuing, Mr Jenkin said, just as in our home life perfect parentage is only possible when there is father and mother, so in our relation as children to God we only realise the fulpess of our privilege when we recognise God as the Father God and the Mother God.

We have come to speak among ourselves of the father’s hand, but always of the mother’s arms. Jesus did both. He was in His our person the perfect revelation at once of the Father* God and the Mother God. He took God’s little ones up into His arms, laid His hands upon them and blessed them . . . blessed them with the double blessing of hand and arms.

The supreme capacity of a mother’s nature is to express itself in comfort.

All nature is plaintive with an instructive mother cry, from the bleating of the lost lamb to the lonely cry of the lost child of the Mother God. And instinct should count for something in interpreting the God whose children we are.

In writing to the Thessalonians, Paul said, ‘For if we believed that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.’ ‘Laid to sleep by Jesus’. What a homely and familiar picture. We are God’s children, while it is called day we spend our strength in toils and journeyings. As the shadows lengthen we grow aweary. It is time to rest in the arms of the Mother God, \yho stoops over us in the Saviour’s condescending ways, we are put to sleep ‘until the day break and the shadows flee away.’ Perhaps even more literally than we thought, our dead ‘die into the arms of God.’

We need not think it some strange presumption thus to translate God’s thought towards us in our p'enijr tence into terms of motherhood. Herein it ij? given to faith to be very bold, and to make all comfort thereof its own.

“I make thy cradle in my arms, Thy pillow in my heart There rest thee now; in every sound Of wind or wave or tree, Hear thou my whisper: I have found my child! Stay close by me.’ As one his mother comforteth, So will I comfort thee.”