“I did it because my mother did it.”

A bride of several months was sawing away at the end of a ham.  “Why,” asked a neighbor, “are you sawing off the end of that ham?”  “Because my mother always did it,” was the bride’s reply.

A few days later the neighbor met the bride’s mother.  “Your daughter tells me you always saw off the end of a ham before you bake it; I wonder why.”  “Frankly,” the mother replied, “I do it because my mother did it.  Why not ask her?”

The neighbor phoned the grandmother who lived in the same town.  The grandmother let her in on her secret:  “I never owned a baking pan large enough to hold a ham.  Why do you ask?”

The influence of Mother over a child is reflected in the ancient proverb, “As is the mother, so is her daughter.” Ezekiel 16:44

What power a mother possesses!  What influence she bears!  Not only has a mother the privilege of living close to her children, inspiring them toward high cultural ideals, teaching them right from wrong, but she is her children’s spiritual counselor and chief example.  What a divine calling!  A mother who lives a wicked life – what can she expect from her offspring?  A mother who laughs at the Bible ay have started her child on the way to becoming a champion agnostic.  A mother who ridicules the moral standards of the Scriptures may have given her son a good start on the road to debauchery.

On the other hand, the mother who illustrates by life the importance of truth, the wrong of a lie, the loveliness of compassion and the rewards of self-denial, will be sowing the seeds of a life of value.  An old Spanish proverb says, “An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.”  Many a son or daughter, about to tumble over the precipice of temptation to destruction, has been rescued by a piece of Mother’s apron string which caught on something and held them safely.

Charles Dickens said, “The virtues of the mothers shall be visited on their children as well as the sins of the fathers.” 

Mother, what kind of an example are you setting before your children?  Are you directing an inquiring mind into spiritual truth?  Do you echo the words of Scripture which say, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth?  III John 4   

The Apostle Paul wrote from his prison cell in Rome to his son in the faith Timothy:

“Greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy; When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.”  II Timothy 1:4-5

To this he added the following statement:

“But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and has been assured of, knowing of whom thou has learned them; And that from a child thou has known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”  II Timothy 3:14-15

Believing mothers like Eunice and grandmothers like Lois produced godly men like Timothy.

Happy Mother’s Day dear friend!