Last year five babies were born in our congregation. God willing, this year there will be four more. We’re a small congregation, so this is significant. It’s tempting to wonder how to get people mobilized for ministry when families continue to grow like this. It’s difficult for mothers of small children to engage in activities outside the home. Often these mothers feel absolutely overwhelmed, and wish they could attend discipleship opportunities and volunteer in more ways, but it’s just impossible. Consequently, one might look at the church from the outside and think that not much was happening.
We’re wrong to think that real ministry isn’t happening when mothers are busy caring for children. Mothers might feel like they’re perpetually treading water, barely keeping their heads up. They might feel like they have nothing to show for a day’s work but a pile of dirty diapers. They might feel the frustration of futility, like Sisyphus pushing the boulder, while they clean up the mess again. They might feel like the end of the rope just slipped out of their weakened grasp when screaming brother won’t stop hitting his screaming sister. They might feel fear and worry that these children might not grow up to be perfect. Could there be a more significant arena for the constant application of the Gospel? Could there be a better avenue for genuine, whole-life Gospel discipleship?
Mothers who are busy caring for their children are doing real ministry when they’re relying on the resources provided by the Gospel in ways that enable them to pour themselves out for the sake of love. Mothers are really ministering when they lift, play, read, hug, cook, feed, wipe, wash, brush, and tuck. Mothers are really ministering when they say, “I love you,” and when they say, “Hot! Ouch! No touch!” Discipline is real ministry. Teaching and training is real ministry. Comforting is real ministry. And pouring yourself out like that is exhausting.
Of course, when you’re exhausted it’s easy for things like anger and shouting to characterize your actions rather than joy and generosity. Exhaustion exposes what’s really going on inside our hearts, exposes our true motivations, because we’re just too tired to keep up appearances. Newsflash: exhaustion will expose your sin, at a deep level. Pay attention to what is exposed, and learn how to apply the Gospel to it like the proper salve to a wound.
Regrettably, we all sin, and we always will in this life. But we should know that the Gospel will always be true in spite of that. Knowing you inside and out, the Father sent his Son for you to win you back to himself. That’s a concrete, historical fact that won’t go away just because you may not be living up to your own standards of motherhood. You don’t live up to God’s standards, and he sent his Son anyway. And his Spirit doesn’t live in you to make you the perfect mother. The Spirit lives in you to assure you of God’s perfect, irrevocable love for you in Christ, and to help you to respond to his grace in ways that you never could without him, to help you respond to his grace in ways that magnify his grace.
So the ministry of motherhood is like any other ministry: sinners saved by God’s grace helping other sinners to learn the same saving grace. But the ministry of motherhood is more holistic, more constant, more draining, with greater potential for tremendous and lasting impact than many other ministries. I’d say that a congregation full of mothers is a congregation ministering the love of Christ in profound ways.
