The Title of Honor

If I were hanged on the highest hill
I know whose love would follow me still

If I were drowned in the deepest sea
I know whose tears would come down to me

If I were damned of body and soul
I know whose prayers would make me whole
Mother o’ mine, 0 mother o’ mine!

Rudyard Kipling (edits mine)


This is the highest, deepest, damnedest truth. I know it for that in the place where my own soul lives. The place where I would throw my life away for John David. I would have thrown it away for a plump, purpley infant with a stump of an umbilical cord still damp. I would throw it away now for a grown man with a family of his own.

I would face lions and tigers to save him. I would chase the devil with an umbrella and have. I would eat the crumbs and give him the meat. I would swallow down the gall to give him sweet days. I would make any moral bargain with life, pay any debt, work at any task to better his lot. I love my son fiercely, tenderly and absolutely forever.

Mothers know how to pray whole-making prayers. We have such access. The scepter extends and we say, "Lord, that my son which is dead may live," and he lives. We say, "Lord, that he will walk before You," and his path is altered. We say, "Lord, that he would find a good wife," and we step aside.

Still, the place of our parental authority to pray good into our children's lives, we never yield. The place where we stand on the necks of their enemies, we do not surrender. God's ears will get no rest from our whole-making intercession. Mom is relentless even when tired (or old).

In Judges 4-5 we see Deborah, a prophetess of God, the fourth Judge of Israel, a counselor, a warrior, and a wife. Deborah who went to war and won, yet when she sings her victory song the title she gives herself is "mother". She doesn't just list what is most important first, she lists it exclusively.

Mother and probably grandmother Deborah went to war for the eggs in her nest. She had heard from her big God and believed for some big things. She put feet to her belief and secured 40 years of peace. The span of a generation.

So it is with us. The International Standard Version says it perfectly and could be speaking of the love in a mother's heart:

She bears up under everything, believes the best in all, there is no limit to her hope, and she will never fall. 1 Corinthians 13:7

My personal favorite whispered to me by a loving God:

And blessed is she that believed, for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord. Luke 1:45





The scepter is extended.
What then shall we ask?