God and His Motherly-Like Care

I planted my “patio garden” yesterday, and I was reminded of something. For a while now, I have been thinking about the motherly aspect of God. I am so used to understanding God as only a Father that I have overlooked that He is everything, including Mother. He wants me to know Him in this way, too. He pleads with His people as a mother longing to comfort her young:

“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, and you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37).

As I tended to each seed—filling pots with dirt, nestling seeds, covering seeds, watering them, labeling them, praying—I realized joyously that I was doing the work of my Creator. I was nurturing life. Just as a seed needs tender care to grow and blossom into its fullness, I need nurturing to grow and blossom. You need nurturing to grow and blossom.

I am like a mother to my little seedlings. Before closing the patio door for the night, I tied to the patio railings makeshift shelters made of twine and cardboard to shield my seedlings from ripping rains during the night. In the morning, I removed the shelters, wanting what seemed like a light rain to water my plants. But while I was gone, a downpour came, worsened by a strong wind, and I couldn’t get home to protect my vulnerable seedlings.

We, too, begin our lives as helpless, vulnerable little souls that need the gentle hands and affirming words of loving parents. But what happens to our souls when the hands aren’t so gentle and the words aren’t so loving? What happens when, for whatever reason—whether it’s the hardships of life, a demanding job, a consuming addiction, an emotional inability—nurturing isn’t forthcoming? What happens to seeds without sun, water, and pruning, or when seeds are exposed to a brutal downpour?

Our souls do not grow properly and we do not blossom with the radiance of our God-given potential. But God is the unrelenting, everlasting giver of life. He was the hand skillfully forming you and me in the womb of our natural mothers. He is the Spirit that gives us a new birth through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus, and becomes for us everything we need to grow and blossom, regardless of our beginning. He always and perpetually makes all things news!

When you send Your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground (Psalm 104:30).

We must pray to fully realize the truth that once we accept Jesus Christ, we are complete. We are not complete after we marry; we are not complete after we have children; we are not complete after we attain our dream. We are heirs of eternal life and everything that is God’s is ours!

But what about the times when I feel lonely and incomplete? Is God a liar? Am I not truly believing? No, I believe that while in our mortal bodies, our ability to receive fully from God is hampered by our flesh. The discrepancy we can feel between the Word of God, which is truth, and our human reality points to how needy we really are, how far we fell in sin, and how deep God’s love really is that continually brings us out of the pit.

What are some of the nurturing qualities of God you have experienced in your life?