You can see

“Celebrate MUM

MOTHER’S DAY Sunday 9th May 2010″

posters hanging in the local PAPERplus shop here in town, where you can buy your stationery and your books.

Celebrate Mother’s Day? Painful feelings are welling up in the hearts of many people on Mother’s Day,  and the thought of celebrating is very far from them.

Farmers is another big shop here in  Kaitaia. The Farmers catalogue at the present time is very big and has many pages. The front cover has a beautiful picture, a mother and a little girl. Both have beautiful white teeth. Underneath the picture you can read, “A beautiful Mother’s Day starts with a gift from Farmers.”

I don’t think there are many people who don’t know by now that Mother’s Day is on the 9th of May this year. When I was walking through the big Farmers shop today,– I think it is a shortcut from our place into town– and when I noticed all the Mother’s Day posters hanging from the ceiling,  I recalled the things I read not long ago in a book written by a lady who is a counsellor and who is also involved in pastoral ministry. She is writing about bad relationship between mothers and daughters.

On the big and small posters it says, “Spoil her” –  “Treat her” – “Pamper her” – “Surprise her” – “Delight her.”

Surprise your mother with a gift from Farmers!

Maybe one or two weeks ago I read this in the paper, “The world and all things in it are treasures; but the most treasured of all is your mother.”

There is nobody who has not had a mother. Do you remember your mother? I remember my mother. She was a praying mother and she read her Bible. She also loved to read her hymn book.

But counsellors and people with pastoral ministry meet again and again with people, especially mothers and daughters, who need to sort out their relationships first before they can really celebrate Mother’s Day.

Some mothers reject their daughters. The daughters are carrying deep wounds and pain from a mother’s rejection. Sometimes there is no hope of reconciliation.

That is the real world we are living in.

But there is not only warfare between mothers and daughters and warfare between parents and children. There seems to be warfare everywhere.

Why is that? Where is peace?

Peace comes from the Lord Jesus Christ and him alone.

Billy Graham says, “We war with one another because of sin, which is a declared state of war against God. Only Christ can cancel sin and create a peace treaty with God and then between men.”