Loving God, on this Mother’s Day, we are mindful of the tremendous calling of being a mother, and we thank you for our mothers: biological, adoptive, and in community, who have nurtured and cared for us, fed us and led us, selflessly served us and rooted us on. What a gift they have been, and we thank you for those faithful women you have placed in our lives. For those whose mothers have passed from this life, we ask your compassion and comfort and look forward to that glad reunion to come.
We pray for mothers who are struggling right now with all the demands of motherhood: on sleepless nights with uncomforted newborns, with exploring toddlers and shy preschoolers, with curious elementary students and youth wrestling with identity and independence. Give these mothers wisdom and patience, perseverance and strength, along with much-needed rest. We pray for mothers of adult children that they will know how to best share experience without being bossy, how to support and encourage without inhibiting growth.
We pray for those women who wanted children but did not or could not bear them, that you would remind them of their great value and purpose when judged by the world. We pray for women undergoing infertility treatments, that you would make procedures successful and bless their homes with the laughter of children, as is their great hope.
And lastly, mothering God, we pray for all those who did not have a great relationship with their own mother and for all needing tender, loving care this morning: the sick, the outcast, the dying, and the grieving. Remind us of your unconditional love for us, your desire to gather us as a mother hen gathers her chicks, and your stubborn refusal, like any nursing mother, to forget her own.
We ask these blessings in the name of Jesus, who cared for his mother and whose mother stayed with him to the very end on the cross. Amen.
