Charley, we are all here today to celebrate you and the sweet baby growing within you. We celebrate and eagerly anticipate the arrival of this dear one so deeply loved already. As you well know, you have already embarked on your journey as a mother. The way you think about day to day life and the future has changed, the way your home looks has changed, your body has changed as it has grown to accommodate the growing life within you. You are aware of the sweet kicks and hiccups from your little one and I’m sure you think often about getting to meet baby face to face.
Isn’t it remarkable that you were a mother before you even knew it? But God knew! He knows your baby perfectly just as he knows you perfectly!
Have you ever thought about how God didn't have to give us mothers? But he did and he has given mothers an important role. Even now I’m sure you feel it...it’s emotional! The joy, excitement, and delight, the fear, worry, and sacrifice...there is a weight to motherhood. It is a sweet weight, but a weight nonetheless. Your relationship with your baby will be completely unlike any relationship you have ever had before. For a long time no one will know your babe quite like you do, your babe won’t need anyone quite like he or she needs you. There will likely be times when you feel like your heart could burst with love for your child. The love any of us feel towards anyone is a miracle from the Lord but the love of a parent to a child is especially miraculous to me. I remember when I had Harrison I was amazed by this love and was struck by how it is a shadow of God’s love for us. I distinctly remember holding Harrison in those early days after he was born just beaming with love for my son and thinking “this little boy has done nothing to earn my love and yet I love him immensely and I would do anything for him.” And I thought how that is like God’s love for us...but of course realized that this shadow fell far short of the reality. In those early days I thought mostly of it falling short in the baby side of the illustration. I thought of how to God even our good deeds are as filthy rags apart from Christ, how we are like a baby completely covered from head to toe in a blowout and God doesn’t hold us at arms length but draws us to himself and makes us clean. Praise Jesus for his cleansing work on the cross!
But there is also the mother’s side of this shadow that falls short from the reality, so painfully short because unlike God we are not perfect. We grow tired and weary, we don’t know our children perfectly, we choose selfishness. You love this precious baby an incredible amount and yet you will still fall short time and time again and it will be hard, likely hard in a way you haven’t experienced before.
And so Charley if you remember nothing else, remember the gospel. When you feel tempted to despair in your failures remember Ephesians 2 where it says “But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” or recall Romans 8 which begins “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” and then goes on to speak of the great love of God for his children. Take courage in being a new creation in Christ freed from sin and death. When worry and fear come don’t hold onto them and spiral but instead “cast your anxieties on the Lord because he cares for you” find your strength and rest in him alone.
We can only do this by setting our minds on Christ. Continue to be in word! Even if being in the word is just choosing a couple of verses to be meditating on. Have songs of truth playing in your home reminding you of God’s great love. Be in prayer. Pray for your parenting and pray for your child. Be in community with other believers who will speak the gospel to you.
So Charley, as you prepare in these last weeks to meet your baby rest in the gospel. As you face sleepless nights and countless diapers rest in the gospel. As your baby smiles and coos at you rest in the gospel. As you meet successes and failures as a mother rest in the gospel. In all you do rest in Jesus.
