Article July 31, 1989 Issue

Mother-love

The Christian Science Monitor

Of all the things we experience in life, perhaps nothing gives us as clear a glimpse of the nature of God as mother-love. Nothing on earth is quite like this love. Whether it's expressed by a man or a woman, or by a child, this desire to mother, to nurture, speaks to the deepest needs of the human heart. The qualities of mother-love—such as purity, goodness, the most tender, loving care, selflessness, self-sacrifice—transcend the human and approach the divine. In such love we see something of divine Love, our Father-Mother God.

And yet, even maternal affection needs to be redeemed. Humanly, such affection seems to be vulnerable. It can be distorted into a smothering, possessive thing, aptly called "smother love." It can seem to cause heartache, as when parents agonize over offspiring who have gone astray. And it can even seem to lead to a feeling of uselessness and emptiness when the child finally "leaves the nest" and biology says we have fulfilled our genetic purpose for being.

These vulnerabilities all come from a sense of love that is limited by a material view of life and of man. For our mother-love to truly help and heal our children, it must literally become more Godlike, more spiritual, more like the healing love Christ expressed.

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