I first wrote and posted this on Facebook in 2015 during my former pastorate as a footnote to an announcement of our services that Lord’s Day. It was well received and widely shared and circulated at that time and proved to be a Gospel comfort and encouragement to many. Numerous times over the ensuing years, someone has had this post pop up in their FB ‘memories’ and sent it back to me with testimonies how the Lord has brought it to their attention again and ‘re-purposed’ it to them with renewed grace...or asked me to re-post it.

I know I speak for the Pastors and brothers and sisters where we now worship and serve …  so, I want to reprise it once again…

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Every mother or woman will not enjoy a ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ today.

Some will intentionally absent themselves from ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ services—just not attend—because they can’t bear the pain. If they do attend, while they sincerely “rejoice with those who rejoice,” they will just as genuinely weep inwardly (and maybe outwardly) with their own personal grief.

While we honor our mothers “for this is right [Ephesians 6.1-2],” we need also to be sensitive to the others who are having a most “(un)Happy Mother’s Day” and reach out to them with the promise and hope of the Gospel of Christ.

• Some do not have mothers because their mothers have died.
• Some may have mothers, but their mothers were abusive—so they don’t want to be even reminded of their mothers.
• Some mothers have suffered the bereavement and death of their children and will cry and grieve anew today.
• Some mothers are separated or even estranged from their children because of nasty divorce settlements and custody battles.
• Some have had abortions of their unborn children—and are besieged again by the guilt and condemnation of their past.
• Some mothers have been abused, neglected, abandoned, or rejected by their children and are living with intense and consuming bitterness and pain.
• Some have only broken and shattered dreams associated with motherhood—either they are unwillingly unmarried or unwillingly childless because of infertility, miscarriages, and stillbirths—and so the celebrations of ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ are only mockeries of their empty hearts.

To all, we say: “Here is Jesus Christ. He loves you and we love you! Christ will be your Savior, Forgiver, and your loving Husband. And, we will be your family! ‘He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds’ [Psalm 147.3]. Come—and welcome! Love is spoken and lived out here!”