Motherhood, Faith, and the Divine Order 

A mother’s love is the closest thing to God’s love most of us will ever feel — before we know God. Think about that for a moment. Before you had language for grace, before you understood covenant, before you ever read a word of Scripture, you experienced something that looked a whole lot like unconditional love. It had a name. It was called Mom. 

There is no adequate word for what a mother carries. The sleepless nights that bleed into years. The silent prayers breathed over a child who didn’t even know she was praying. The way she forgives you before you’ve finished apologizing — sometimes before you even realize you were wrong. I think of my own mother in those moments. I think of her hands, her patience, the way she could walk into a room of chaos and make it feel like peace. 

That kind of love isn’t ordinary. It’s miraculous. And yet — it points somewhere. 

The most miraculous love you’ve ever received from a human being was designed to make you thirsty for something even greater. 

Love’s Proper Place 

Here’s where I want to take you — somewhere unexpected for a Mother’s Day post — but stay with me, because I believe it’s the most honoring thing we can say about maternal love. 

The very qualities that make a mother’s love so staggering — its selflessness, its constancy, its capacity to absorb pain without bitterness — are not random. They are reflections. Scripture tells us that God is love (1 John 4:8), which means that every true expression of love in this world is, at its root, a glimpse of Him. A mother’s love doesn’t just warm your heart. It’s meant to point your heart in a direction. 

“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”  — Colossians 1:17  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”  — Matthew 22:37 

Think of it like building a house. The walls can be beautiful — and maternal love is among the most beautiful walls there are — but before a single wall goes up, the foundation has to be laid. God must be loved first and foremost, not because He’s competing with our love for others, but because He’s the very ground beneath it. 

When Love Becomes Misplaced 

C.S. Lewis understood this tension. In The Great Divorce, he portrays a mother so consumed by love for her deceased son that her affection becomes something else entirely — an idol. What began as one of the most natural and beautiful loves in the world slowly crowded out every other love, including her love for God. The tragedy isn’t that she loved her son too much. The tragedy is that her love became disordered. 

Lewis was onto something the Bible has always taught: love, when it is misplaced, stops serving the beloved and starts serving the lover. The mother in his story no longer loved her son. She was feeding something into herself. That’s what idolatry does — it takes something good and makes it ultimate. 

This is why Mary, the mother of Jesus, is such a profound model for us. She was asked to do what no other mother has been asked to do: step back from the role of mother and step into the role of disciple. When Jesus began his public ministry, Mary had to release her son to something larger than her love for him. She didn’t disappear — she was at the cross, she was in the upper room. But she had to redefine her grip. That is faith. That is love rightly ordered. 

She didn’t love him less. She loved God enough to hold her son with an open hand. 

The Heart War: A Daily Struggle 

If we’re being honest, we all know this battle. The heart doesn’t drift loudly. It drifts quietly. You don’t wake up one day and decide that your family comes before God, or that your career matters more than your calling, or that the approval of people you love has quietly become the thing you arrange your life around. It just happens. Slowly. Almost imperceptibly. 

The church at Ephesus knew exactly what this felt like. They were faithful. They were doctrinally sound. They were serving. And Jesus still said this to them: 

“Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.”  — Revelation 2:4 

That verse has always unsettled me in the best way. Because the Ephesians didn’t abandon God — they just let other things edge closer to the center. Good things. Ministry things. Family things. And slowly, the first love got crowded to the margins. 

James 1:14 reminds us that temptation works through our own desires — we are dragged away, enticed. The word enticed means to be lured by bait. The most dangerous bait isn’t sin. It’s the good thing elevated to the wrong position. 

Realigning Our Hearts 

So here’s the invitation — and I’m issuing it to myself as much as to anyone reading this. 

What occupies the center of your affections right now? Not what should. What actually does? What relationship, ambition, or need for approval is sitting on the throne that belongs to God alone? 

This is not a guilt trip. This is a homecoming. 

When we place God back at the center, we don’t love our mothers any less —we love them better. When our love for God is the foundation, every other love in our lives gets elevated, purified, and freed from the impossible weight of being ultimate. Your mother was never meant to be your god. But she was absolutely designed to show you what God’s love looks like with skin on it. 

That’s worth honoring. That’s worth celebrating. And that’s worth following all the way back to the Source. 

Honor her by letting her love do what it was always meant to do — point you toward the One who loved you first. 

A Reflection for Today 

Before you put down your phone, before you make the call or send the text or sit down at the table today — take sixty seconds. Ask God to show you where your loves are ordered. Ask Him to be first again, or still, or for the hundredth time this week. 

Then go love your mother well. Tell her what she meant. Let her know she succeeded — not just in raising you, but in showing you something true about God. 

A mother’s love truly is miraculous. An everyday glimpse of grace. A fingerprint of the divine on the ordinary fabric of family life. 

Follow it all the way home.