Abiding Love

Yesterday I drove the 75 miles to Skowhegan, Maine to celebrate the Eucharist with a small but lively congregation.  In honor of Mother's Day, I used Robert Munch's "Love You Forever" as part of my sermon.  Sheila McGraw's illustrations are quite wonderful with the cover showing a two-year-old with a very satisfied smile on his face, sitting next to a toilet strewing toilet paper everywhere. For those who do not know the book, it's about a mother who sings as she rocks her son back and forth:

I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always;
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.

We hear how the boy grows and grows and still the mother manages to rock him and sing the song to him (she always makes sure he is asleep by peeking up over the side of his bed).  It is not all sweetness and light—the boy drives her "CRAZY;" she wants "to sell him to the zoo;" and feels like she "is in a zoo."  But she continues to find ways to rock him and sing to him until at the end of her life he does the same for her and then to his new born daughter.

I used the story to talk about God's abiding love for us and how God is a Mothering-Father.  It is important to acknowledge all those in our lives who have mothered us: some of whom were men and others women; some were related to us by blood and others by love. God's abiding love is always there, even when we are not aware of it.  We, who are nurtured by such love, are to pass it on. I ended by saying it is this abiding love that we, as Christians, have to offer to the world.