Discussion Questions
What are things you associated with motherhood?
What does (or did) a typical day of motherhood entail?
When does motherhood end?
Game
Mothers are the number one recipient of greeting cards! And the most heartwarming cards and poems are typically given around Mother’s Day. Hold a contest in which each woman/team writes their own poem or creates a Hallmark worthy card. Show and read them aloud. Award prizes to the best, worst, funniest, or most thoughtful.
Suggested Songs
The following songs can be found on YouTube.
A Mother’s Prayer by Keith and Kristyn Getty
God So Loved by Hillsong Worship
How Deep the Father’s Love for Us by Stuart Townsend
Love in Action
Offer to take over ‘Motherhood’ for a day in the life of a local mother. A team can begin bright and early by arriving at the home and making breakfast, getting children on the bus/drive to school, cleaning the home, doing laundry and dishes, preparing dinner, assisting with homework, and cleaning up after dinner while the mom spends time with her kids. Leave quietly with a written card left behind with a small prayer and chocolate. [Be sure in all of this that your volunteers have completed Safe From Harm.]
Prayers for Mothers
Take turns praying for the mothers in the group as well as mothers in your community.
Motherhood is Messy
By Major Arvilla Hostetler
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17b-19).
Motherhood is messy! From an infant’s dirty diapers to a teenager’s filthy laundry, motherhood keeps us on our toes and knee–deep in messes. Oh, how do moms do it?! Day after day, a life of spills, messes and cleaning up … all done because of love.
Tom Mullen once wrote, “Where two or three are gathered together, someone spills his milk.” He’s right, and if it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will. You see, the principle that we all live by is this: I spill milk. You spill milk. All God’s children spill milk. Sometimes other things are spilled as well—feelings such as anger, hostility and frustration. Sometimes we spill history: such as past failures, old grievances and painful embarrassments.
Let’s face it, engaging in anything sacramental has the potential to cost us something before or in
addition to the good that we gain. To become whole and healthy, whether as a family or an individual, comes at a price. So the question becomes, are willing to pay that price?
In some homes spilled milk is screamed at. The spillers are denounced, judged, castigated, often called stupid and singled out for embarrassment. In other homes, spilled milk is cried over; and cried over; and cried over, and cried over.
In healthy (Christian) homes, spilled milk is cleaned up. If there are tears, they are momentary. If there are rebukes and calls for future caution, they are accompanied by towels and spot remover. And if I never learned anything else, I learned that the work of a Christian home is cleanup work. Cleanup work that involves not only messes we make, but the messes made by the people we love. For if we cannot find in our home people who try to love each other in the same manner as Jesus loved, sooner or later, we will find ourselves alone in a broken home.
I know that I have been talking about individual homes and families, but I could just as easily have inserted corps for the word home because that is what our corps is and should be. The congregation is the family, and it doesn’t matter the size of the table or family. The principle holds true: I spill milk. You spill milk. All God’s children spill milk.
Walter Wangerin shares: “Unless that home … that family [corps] can draw upon Christ, whose capacity to forgive outlasts and exhausts our propensity to sin, spill, and screw up; and who said to His friends, with whom He made His home, try loving each other like this.”
Christ loves … spilled milk. The messiness is cleaned up through love.
