WHY THE NAME CHANGE?

Last week I decided Vic was right. I got an E-mail letter for a fellow who wanted to contribute a script idea for the TV show. I said, "That's it. I'm ready to change." My wife actually came up with the new name - "All About Families." We hope you like it and hope it will end the confusion.

On June 18, 1815 a signal corps attempted to transmit the results of the battle of Waterloo by sending a coded message across the English channel with powerful light beams. The decoders on the English coast thought he message said, "WELLINGTON DEFEATED." All students of history know that Wellington won, so why did the folks in England think their army lost?

The message as originally transmitted read, "WELLINGTON DEFEATED NAPOLEON AT WATERLOO." No one seem to realize that the message was interrupted by a sudden fog that enveloped the English Channel, which explains why the British decoders only saw the first two words.

I'm not surprised that the signal corps people encountered difficulty in trying to communicate across the English Channel with lights. Sometimes my wife and I have trouble communicating from one end of the kitchen to the other. We can speak in a normal tone of voice and neither one of us admits to needing a hearing enhancement device, but we (or more accurately I should say I) don't always get the message. Just the other day I was standing at one end of the kitchen, while she was seated at the kitchen table. At the close of her monologue I heard her say, "What did I just say?" I hate it when she does that. I feel like I'm back in school and I'm being subjected to a pop quiz.

Somehow, I managed to recall the last few words of her message. I can think on my feet pretty fast when the occasion demands, so I quickly guessed at what must have gone before the words I actually heard, put that together with what I actually heard and fed it back to her. I might as well have been on Mars because the message I fed back and the one she transmitted had nothing to do with each other. In my own defense, I will say that she talked to me when by back was turned. No husband should ever be held accountable for messages communicated while his back is turned. The backs of our ears actually deflect the sound. Don't ask me to back that up scientifically.

Successful marriage requires constant, open communication. Unfortunately sudden fogs have a way of shutting it down. Looking back on the situation, I think I might have been a more effective listener if I had turned in my wife's direction when she started talking. Better yet, I should have walked across the room and seated my self near her. According to the Bible "husbands should love their wives as their own bodies" (Ephesians 5:27). When we start taking that principle seriously our wives won't have to talk to us while our backs are turned.

INTRODUCTION

In our country, we set aside certain days to honor certain events and people. In just a few days we'll celebrate "Memorial Day," which was originally designated to honor those who died in wars, but more recently has come to be a way of honoring all those who have gone before us. We have Independence Day on July 4 to honor the founding of our nation and Labor Day in September to honor the nation's workers.

But of all those kinds of holidays, I think my favorite is Mother's Day. I like it because I have such a deep respect for the people it honors and while I know the holiday has been overly commercialized, I'm still glad that we are a nation of people who value motherhood.

As we approach "Mother's Day," I want ask you to think of motherhood as ministry.

THE CONCEPT OF MOTHER

The year was 1963. Betty Friedan wrote a book called, The Feminine Mystique in which she claimed that women are trapped in an unwanted life of domesticity. Translated into shirt sleeve English that means that most women don't' really want to be stay at home Moms. Three years later, the same woman founded the National Organization for Women, a radical political organization designed to promote the cause now known as feminism.

Radical feminism assaults the self esteem of women who make motherhood a priority. To them the work of child raising is better done in a day care setting, while women find their place in the world by competing with men for all the marbles in the world of business and commerce. The majority of the people in our society really don't want to be identified with the agenda of the radical feminist movement, but the extremists have moved those in the middle and have generally been successful in promoting their agenda to this extent. Many women have come to believe that it's not personally fulfilling just to stay at home and be a mother.

There was a time when motherhood was a status symbol among women. In Genesis 30:1, the Bible record says, "when Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, 'Give me children, or I'll die!'" To Rachel her sense of personhood, her self esteem, her sense of dignity, her fulfillment in life was connected to being a mother.

But the structure of our society is in the opposite direction. The woman who has worth and value is the one who runs a business, serves in a political office or anchors the nightly news on television. Far be it from me to say that women shouldn't do these things, but can't we do something to let the Moms of the world know that preparing meals, running the kids to dental appointments and Little League games and putting a band aid on a child's arm are all valuable acts of service and even essential the development of children?

Unfortunately if a stay at home Mom goes to a party, she feels intimidated when somebody asks "What do you do my dear?" Somehow she's made to feel her work lacks status and importance. On top of that, motherhood takes a physical toll on the body. Gladys Hunt wrote that many of today's women don't want to become mothers because they have seen other women lose the good looks of their youth and their husbands turn to younger women who don't have varicose veins from birthing four babies.

Only a few would be so brazen as to do what Peg Campolo did. Peg Campolo is the wife of an East Coast College professor. She chose to stay at home and raise her children. Since her husband was a college professor type, occasionally she would go to a faculty party. And some of these academicians would look condescendingly at her and say, "What do you do my dear?" She would say, "I am socializing two homo sapiens in the dominant values of the Judeo-Christian tradition in order that they may be instruments for the transformation of the social order in the teleologically prescribed utopia, inherent in the eschaton." That usually ended the intimidation.

2. The problem is made worse by some of us in the church who haven't thought through what we are saying to our mothers. If a woman goes to some of the special ladies' day programs and women's seminars, programs. she is not likely to be reinforced as a mother. My wife got so turned off with them, that when we go to lectureships, she rarely goes to the special programs for women. Those who do will often be guilt tripped by glib talking females, with every hair in place and enough jewelry hanging from their ears to sink a battleship, about their duty to become soul winners, to knock on doors, to become spark plugs in the various ministries of the church. The poor lady, who has three kids who haven't yet reached school age, goes away feeling guilty because she isn't involved in the Lord's work. They hear about the woman in the 31st chapter of Proverbs who did everything from dabbling in real estate to sewing bedspreads and they go away feeling guilty because they know there's just not anyway they can become a clone of the woman in Proverbs 31. As a matter of fact they can't even see themselves measuring up to the lady with the atrocious earrings - much less the worthy woman in Proverbs 31. Actually, Proverbs 31 is describing the ideal woman, not a particular woman. I doubt that there's a woman on earth who has ever measured up to Proverbs 31 in every respect.

I just wish that those who think that a woman's primary business is her devotion to church work would listen to some people who have followed that plan of action and lived to regret it.

Here is the text of a letter that I received from a mother several years ago. The lady who wrote this letter was and is a faithful Christian. She has two adult children, who are also deeply involved in the life of the church. Listen carefully to what she says,

"So many times I have put aside my duties I wanted to do at home to do 'church work.' Ever since I can remember I have been bombarded with the idea that unless I was involved in everything, I didn't put my Lord first.

I think the most regrettable thing is being so involved for several years with the youth group and leaving my children with my folks. I now feel I gave up precious hours with them that are irretrievable. The sad part is that our efforts were not successful in teaching these young people everlasting values. The only ones who are faithful are the ones whose parents are faithful and taught them that way."

In her letter she goes on to talk about how she now believes that a mother should function in the church.

First, we establish a bond to build a firm relationship with our life's partner. The children come and we progress to the diaper and dirty dishes stage which we should take great pride in. If teaching little ones that God is and that God loves is not church work, what is?"

What this lady is saying is that the ministry of motherhood is mother's primary area of Christian service. And to that, I would say, "Amen."

THE MINISTRY OF MOTHERHOOD

In 1 Corinthians 7:34, Paul talks about "an unmarried woman or virgin" who "is concerned about the Lord's affairs; He says her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit." In Acts 9, we read about people crying over the loss of their beloved sister, Dorcas and verse 36 says, "she was always doing good and helping the poor." In Acts 18, Priscilla, the wife of Aquilla was involved in evangelistic activity and shared in explaining the word of the Lord more adequately to an eloquent man named, Apollos. According to Acts 21:9, Philip had four virgin daughters who prophesied. There are many avenues of service for Christian women, ministries in the church which they can legitimately carry out.

But what I'm saying is that if a woman makes the choice to become a mother, there's going to be a few years in there, in which her primary ministry area will be inside her home. Some years ago, a missionary was trying to stir up interest to get people go to Africa to preach the gospel. At the end of the service, a woman dragging a little tow headed boy behind her, told the missionary, "I just feel like God is calling me to be a missionary." The missionary said, "He is, indeed" and pointing to that little boy, he said, "And there's the little heathen he wants you to preach too."

Listen carefully to the word of God in Titus 2. In verse 3, Paul addresses older women in the church. He says that he wants Timothy to "teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good." Who are these women going to teach and what are the good things they are to teach? In the next two verses he says, "Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands." How important is the mother's ministry in the home? He goes on to say that if the ministry of motherhood gets done, "no one will malign the word of God." He says that mothers actually prevent people from discrediting the word of God. And I know a lot of preachers who aren't capable of that.

WHO'S GONNA FILL THEIR SHOES?

But I'd like to take his question in a different direction. Who's gonna fill mother's shoes? Who's going to rock babies to sleep and sing lullabies at bedtime? Who's going to be able to keep the names of all the characters straight after a reading of the story of "Winnie, the Pooh?" And who's going to climb fences to rescue a lost kite?

And when tomorrow's college football player, has just distinguished himself on national television in an unbelievable display of violent heroics, what's he gonna say, if he no longer feels the urge to say, "Hi Mom?"

Who is gonna fill their shoes? It's not the state run Day Care Center. It's not the television set and the VCR or even the Internet.. And the children themselves can't fill those shoes.

CONCLUSION

I'm glad we have "Mother's Day." If I find any fault in it, I guess it would be to suggest that we ought to have the same regard for mother the other 364 days of the year that we show on the second Sunday of May. We salute mothers and the ministry of motherhood.

Norman Bales
Minden, Louisiana

Thanks for putting up with such a long newletter. See you next week.