By Robert Anderson, BCM/D President and Pastor of Colonial Baptist Church, Randallstown, Md.
May is a month for Mothers. Please allow me to express my love and appreciation for my own mother, who by God’s grace will turn 80 years old this November. I rejoice that my mother has been around my entire 58 years and she has always been a caring and encouraging soul to me and all my siblings.
In Proverbs 31, a mother schools her son, King Lemuel, on finding a excellent wife, and admittedly says to him that they are hard to find. His mom states in verse 10,
“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.” A godly wife and mother are to be especially treasured and honor, and as we grow older they indeed become more beautiful. The famous writer and poet, Walt Whitman, framed it this way,
“Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young,
The young are beautiful ~ but the old are more beautiful than the young” (in “Beautiful Women”, 1860).
So, to all the brothers reading this tribute, treat the special women in your life with tender loving care, as joint heirs of the grace of life. Your mother, your wife, and daughter(s) deserve your best in love and devotion. Take time to truly express your strong love and support for them. I am sure your heard the story of the guy who was crying over a tombstone at a cemetery…he was just balling his eyes out asking, “Why did you have to die, why did you have die, why, why, why did you have to die?” Another man close by was there visiting another lost relative, overheard the guy wailing, so he said, “Sir, I am so sorry. Is that your dear wife?” The man said, “No it’s my wife’s first husband.”
The precious and inspired verses in Proverbs 31:10-31 honors the virtuous woman best at the end of the chapter,
“Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.” Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but the woman who fears The Lord is to be praised.” (Prov. 31: 28-30)
In closing, I ran across this prayer for husbands for their wives that stirred my heart, and I hope it will move yours:
Lord, may there be no moment in her life
When she regrets that she became wife,
And keep her dear eyes just a trifle blind
To my defects, and to my failings kind!
Help me to do the utmost that I can
To prove myself her measure of a man,
But, if I often fail as mortals may,
Grant that she never sees my feet of clay!
And let her make allowance~~now and then~~
That we are only grown-up boys, we men,
So, loving all our children, she will see,
Sometimes, a remnant of the child in me!
Since years must bring to all their load of care,
Let us together every burden bear,
And when Death beckons one its path along,
May not the two of us be parted long!
( by Mazie V. Caruthers)