05/10/2026
The Comfort of a Mother
Mother's Day Devotional
May 10, 2026
There is something about a mother's voice in the dark of night, a quiet word that settles a fearful child back into sleep. Most of us carry that memory somewhere deep inside, even those of us whose mothers were imperfect, even those whose mothers are gone. When the prophet Isaiah reached for an image big enough to hold the love of God, he reached for that very picture. "As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you," God speaks in Isaiah 66:13. It is striking that the God of heaven and earth would describe himself with the tenderness of a mother bending over a crib. That single line tells us something true about who God is and how God meets us. It tells us we are not strangers to him, but children he knows by name.
Mother's Day is a tender day for many reasons. Some of us will hug our mothers today and feel deep gratitude. Some of us will miss a mother who has gone home to the Lord and feel the ache of an empty chair. Some of us never knew the kind of mother we longed for, and the day stirs up old wounds we thought had healed. Some of us wanted to be mothers and never were, or are walking the hard road of grief over a child no longer here. There is room in the household of God for every one of these stories. We do not pretend the day is simple, because life rarely is. What we can say with quiet confidence is that the God who made us knows the shape of every grief and every joy we carry this morning.
The good news is that motherly love, at its best, is a small window into a much larger love. A faithful mother loves her child before the child can love her back. She feeds, she sacrifices, she stays awake when others sleep. That kind of love is a gift and a glimpse, but it is not the source. The source is the steadfast love of God, who loved us first and will not let us go. Paul reminded young Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:5 of the sincere faith that lived first in his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice, faith passed down through ordinary days and quiet prayers at kitchen tables. So today we give thanks for the women who taught us to pray, who sang over our cribs, who showed us by the way they lived that God is faithful. And we lean again on the One whose comfort never runs out, who gathers us close when we feel most alone, and who promises that nothing in life or in death can separate us from his love.
Prayer:
Gracious God, we thank you for the gift of mothers, and for every woman who has loved us, taught us, and pointed us to you. We hold before you those who grieve today and those who quietly carry burdens we cannot see. Comfort them as only you can, the way a mother comforts her child. Remind us of your steadfast love, which is older and deeper than we can imagine. By your grace, help us walk in the faith that has been handed down to us, and pass it on faithfully to those who come after. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
@ 2026 Kenly Presbyterian Church
