Under His Wings Mother’s Day ‘01

I’d like to begin today by telling you about an elderly woman who lives in a nursing home. She is 91 years old and has 6 children, 20 grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren. Her husband died a long time ago, leaving her a widow for longer than she was married.

The aging process has not been easy for this little old woman. In recent years, Alzheimers disease has robbed her of her mind and her bright personality. Now she spends all her days in a nursing home, stooped over, with a permanently confused look on her face. She can’t see, because she can’t be trusted with her glasses, and she can’t hear because she doesn’t know how to manage her hearing aid. She can’t do anything but sit or stand and stare blankly out the window at a world that doesn’t make sense anymore.

Her room is nothing more than a bed and a bare bureau, because she can’t cope with the confusion of having pictures on the walls or ornaments on the bedstand. She wouldn’t know who was in the pictures anyway. When she looks into the mirror, she doesn’t even know the woman who is looking back at her.

When her children and grandchildren come to visit, she doesn’t recognize them – and conversation has long since become impossible. But something mysterious deep within her tells her that these visitors somehow belong to her, and she always has hugs and kisses for them.

The only time her dim eyes light up is when she sees a baby. It seems as though the last circuits of her brain that are still working properly are the ones that are hard-wired to her identity as a mother.

This frail little lady, who lives in a nursing home in Montreal, is named Mary, and she is my mother. When I look at her now, and remember her from my childhood, I can only shake my head in wonder and take comfort from the fact that this is not how her story will end.

My mother was a very capable woman and a great Mom. She had lots of training for that role. You see, her father died when she was just a child. Her mother had to go to work to support the family. And little Mary, at just 8 years of age, had to drop out of school in order to take care of her younger siblings. She only made it to the third grade, and although she was just a child herself, she became a mother to her younger brother and sisters.

Rapidly, she grew up – through the First World War and into the Roaring Twenties, until on the very eve of the Great Depression, she caught the eye of a dashing young man named Tom McKnight and they were married on August 24, 1929. Mary was 19, Tom was 21.

Over the next two decades or so, they would have six children, bringing them into a world in upheaval, first with an economic crisis, then with a Second World War even more devastating than the first, followed by a Cold War of nuclear tension. But Tom and Mary had their eyes on God, and they provided their kids with a loving, stable home where Jesus Christ was at the center.

My earliest memories of my mother were of her doing the washing. To a toddler like me, our washing machine was a monster to be feared. It was a wringer model and I remember being warned countless times not to get near the wringer or one of my arms might be caught and swallowed up by it. And yet, there was my Mom, fearlessly feeding clothes through the wringer with hardly a concern for her own safety. That was when I learned that my Mom was brave!

And boy, could she cook! With eight mouths to feed, and constant company coming through our house, my Mom could whip up the most delicious meals. And somehow, she managed to do all this without a microwave, or a timer oven, or even an electric mixer. That was when I learned that my Mom was resourceful!

And she was talented too. Mom and Dad were very active in our church in Montreal, and my mother was often called upon to sing. She had a beautiful soprano voice and she was often the soloist on Gospel radio programs that were broadcast in Montreal at that time. Mom’s best friend Ina was an alto, and they often sang duets together. I can actually remember them practicing duets over the phone. That was when I learned that my Mom was gifted.

But the thing I remember most about my Mom was that she was unselfish. She was always doing things for us: making lunches, sewing clothes, ironing shirts, cooking meals, healing hurts and binding wounds. Her life was devoted to serving others.

And I know that most of you could say the same about your mother.

Our mothers are a gift from God. They have qualities that fathers don’t have. Where Dad is tough, Mom is tender. Where Dad challenges you, Mom comforts you. Mom is your greatest fan. She never gives up on you; never stops believing in you, never stops hoping the best for you. Her love for you is a compassionate love and an unconditional love.

The impact of that mother-love stays with you all the days of your life. Have you ever noticed, when the TV cameras zoom in on athletes on the sideines, they invariably say “Hi Mom!” Because they know Mom will be watching, and they know how much they owe to her love.

Where do mothers get that quality we call “mother-love”? They get it from God, because that’s the kind of love that God has for us. God has designed mother-love into our mothers in order to teach us something about himself.

The Bible speaks of God as our Heavenly Father, and it is right and proper for us to think of him that way. The Scripture always refers to God in the male gender. When Jesus came to earth, he came as a man, not as a woman. So it isn’t proper for us to refer to God as “our Heavenly Mother”. God is not our Mother; He is our Father.

But, having said that, the Bible does have some beautiful and very tender passages where mothering images are used to describe God. Although He is our Heavenly Father, he also treats us, and loves us, the way that a mother does.

One of the powerful mothering images that is given to us in the Bible comes from the world of nature; specifically, from the relationship of a mother bird with her chicks. There are several word pictures in Scripture that describe the way that God shelters us under His wings the way that a mother bird shelters her chicks. It’s a tender, nurturing, protective image that teaches us about the nature and character of God’s love.

When we take shelter under God’s wings, he does four things for us…

1. Under his wings, he feeds us

Psalm 36:7-9 How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. For with you is the fountain of life…

Many birds have an interesting way of feeding their young. The mother bird will go out food-gathering and she’ll catch several bugs, or worms, or whatever. And she will actually swallow them. That food will go into a sort of holding area called the crop. There, the food is broken down and pre-digested.

When the mother bird returns to her nest, she will actually regurgitate the food that is in her crop and give it to her young. It is already partially broken down, bathed in her own digestive juices, and more suitable for them. So along with the food, she’s actually giving them part of herself.

When we take shelter under the wings of God as Psalm 36 describes, he feeds us. He gives us spiritual food that satisfies us and helps us to grow.

Our souls are hungry and need nourishment. The world offers us counterfeit “soul food”. It seems to be exciting and attractive and tempting, but ultimately it is poisonous to us. It doesn’t satisfy the deep hunger in our hearts. It doesn’t nourish us. It deadens us and leaves us starving. But the spiritual food that God gives us from His Word nourishes our souls because when he feeds us, he is actually giving us himself.

John 6:35; 54-56 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.

This sounds like a rather shocking image. In fact, in the earliest days of church history, people actually accused Christians of being cannibals because they talked about eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus.

But what Jesus really meant by this saying is that we need to enter into an intimate relationship with him - so intimate that it is as though we were eating his flesh and drinking his blood. We take him into ourselves and He becomes part of us and he nourishes us.

Psalm 34:8 Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

1 Peter 2:2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.

God wants to feed your soul, but in order for him to do that, you’ve got to take refuge under his wings.

There is an interesting little bird called the woodcock. It is small, and not a very good flyer. It spends most of its time on the ground. It has a very long narrow beak which it uses to catch worms and grubs. Its favorite food is the night crawler - those long, succulent earthworms that fishermen use.

The woodcock has a very special strategy for catching earthworms. If the weather has been particularly dry, the worms burrow down deep where the soil is cool and moist. But that’s too far down for the woodcock to reach them. So God has taught the woodcock a very creative strategy to get them back up to the surface. It spreads its wings and begins to gently flutter around on the ground, making a kind of pitter-patter sound.

Earthworms’ bodies are very sensitive to vibration. If you’ve ever tried to catch night-crawlers, you know that. The earthworms pick up the pitter-patter sound up above and think that it is raining. They know instinctively that if it is raining, they’ve got to get up to the surface, or they’ll drown. So the worms head up to the surface, and they come within reach of the woodcock’s long beak. That’s how the woodcock provides food for itself and its family.

When we shelter under God’s outspread wings, he feeds us, just like a mother bird feeds her chicks. He gives us spiritual nourishment that we can’t find anywhere else.

2. Under his wings, he protects us.

Psalm 17:8-9 …hide me in the shadow of your wings from the wicked who assail me, from my mortal enemies who surround me.

David wrote that psalm at a time in his life when he was under attack. King Saul was after him. He was a fugitive, so he fled to the wilderness down by the Dead Sea. It is a fiercely hot, rugged land. The temperature soars to 120 degrees in the shade.

Perhaps, in his wanderings there, David happened upon a mother bird shading her chicks from the hot sun by spreading her wings over them. This is the image we have in this Psalm: hide me in the shadow, or literally, the shade of your wings.

Psalm 57:1 Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, for in you my soul takes refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.

Psalm 61:4 I long to dwell in your tent forever and take refuge in the shelter of your wings.

David knew where to go in times of distress and disaster. He knew where his protection was: it was under the wings of the Lord God. As he prayed, as he meditated on the Word of God, he was comforted and sheltered from his enemies.

It may be that you are going through a particularly difficult time in your life right now. You may be struggling with problems and pain. It may seem as though the hand of everyone is against you. You may be tempted to say “God has forgotten me.” But that’s when you should be running to Him to find shelter in the shadow of His wings just like David did.

When our boys were younger, a day would hardly go by in our house when one of our sons didn’t need some comforting. Life can be hard when you’re a kid. You fall and scrape your knee. The baseball hits your head instead of your bat. The kids up the street won’t share their toys with you. The best cure for the bumps and bruises of childhood is a mother’s loving arms. There’s a safety, a security there that says “I know it hurts, and it’s okay to cry. But everything will be alright because Mommy loves you.”

And that’s the kind of sheltering, protecting love that God has for us.

Isaiah 66:13 As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.

3. Under his wings, he speaks to us.

There’s an interesting variety of duck called the wood duck. Most ducks build their nests along the shorelines of lakes and rivers. But the female wood duck builds her nest high up in the trees of the forest. The mother duck finds a suitable hollow in a tree about 15 or 20 feet off the ground. Then she lays 5 or 6 eggs. She sits on them to incubate them.

Two or three days before the eggs are to hatch, the mother duck senses the babies stirring inside the eggs. At that point, she begins to talk softly to them. This gets the babies used to the sound of her voice. You might not think that this is very important, but it is because of what happens next.

The eggs hatch, and within the next twenty-four hours, the mother duck and her babies are going to leave that nest. First, the mother duck flies down to the forest floor. Then she calls back up to her chicks. They are still in the next and they cannot see her, but they can hear her voice. Because they recognize her voice coming from down below, they jump out of the nest. They can’t fly yet, so they fall 20 feet to the ground. But their soft feathers, and the foliage on the forest floor cushions their fall.

Once they’ve all jumped out of the nest, the mother duck gathers them together, and off they march through the forest to the nearest lake. That’s where the babies grow up.

Because the babies recognize their mother’s voice, they follow her to safety. If they hadn’t jumped out of the nest when she called them, they would have died.

In the same way, when we take shelter under God’s wings, he speaks to us. We get used to the sound of his voice. We become conditioned to following him, wherever he leads us. If we don’t follow his voice, we’ll perish. When we follow his voice, he leads us to safety.

In the Old Testament, God tried for many years to talk to his people, but they didn’t seem to like the sound of his voice. He sent them prophets and messengers, and they rejected them. Then, when he sent his own son to speak to them, they rejected him.

Matthew 23:37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

They didn’t want to be under his wings, so they never learned to hear his voice.

Are you listening to God’s voice today?

4. Under his wings, he challenges us to grow

Well, we’ve been talking about how God is like a mother bird sitting on a nest, sheltering her babies under her wings. She feeds them, she protects them, and she speaks to them. But sooner or later, it’s time to leave the nest! That must be a traumatic experience for a little bird who doesn’t know how to fly. But the only way to learn how to fly is to leave the nest.

Picture a baby eagle. Eagles make their nests high up in the crags and cliffs of the mountains. For many weeks, the eagle chick shelters there under the wings of his mother. His parents bring him all the food he needs. He is safe from predators, because the nest is so high and remote that nobody can get to it. I’m sure that if you asked the little eagle, he would say that he had it made. He would love to stay there forever.

But one day, the mother eagle comes along and, instead of feeding him, or sheltering him, she roughly pushes him out of the nest. Imagine the little eagle’s shock when that happens!

When you get pushed out of an eagle’s nest, there’s no place to go but straight down! The little eagle begins flapping his wings madly as he falls through the air. But it’s no good - he doesn’t know how to fly. He’s going to crash on the rocks below. But at the last second, when he’s closing his eyes for the impact, a giant shape swoops down under him and catches him. It’s Mom! What a relief!

The mother eagle carries her baby eagle on her back, or gently in her talons. Up she takes him on her strong wings. Then she dumps him off for another flying lesson. How would you like to go through that kind of flight training?

But this is the way that God often deals with us. He wants us to grow, he wants us to stretch our wings and learn to fly by faith. We can’t stay in the nest forever.

Moses said this about Israel…

Deuteronomy 32:10-11 In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions.

Exodus 19:4 …I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.

God loves us tenderly. He loves us like a mother. He shelters us under his wings. He feeds us, he protects us, he speaks to us. But he also challenges us to grow in faith. And those challenges can often be frightening and intimidating. We can feel as though God has left us all alone. But He is always there to catch us and carry us on his wings.

Mothers, we appreciate you! We appreciate you for all you have done for us. But most of all, we appreciate you because you show us what God is like.