Sharon Colgin and her "Extra Mom" dancing with my Mom at my nephew's wedding.

Mother's Day, not Mothers' Day is an American tradition started by a daughter, Anna Marie Jarvis,  who felt one day needed to be set aside for children to honor their own mothers.

Paul reminds us that we are part of a larger family as well and that the call to honor is even broader.

“[Treat] the elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity.” -1 Timothy 5:2

 Just who is your mother?

Timothy had his own mother and grandmother, but as a pastor, he was to set an example to all the church to treat all the elder women as mothers. They were to be respected, honored, and treated with care and affection.

Who is your mother? Who do you honor on Mother’s Day?

First, it would be the woman who gave you birth. While giving birth to a baby may not make you a mother in every sense, it is a pretty amazing contribution to life. She carried you for nine months, twenty four hours a day. Every bit of nutrition and all of your protection came from her.

She gave a big chunk of her life to give you all of your life.

Then, it is the woman or the women who raised you or helped to raise you – natural mothers, foster mothers, big sisters, aunts, babysitters, teachers, Sunday School teachers and, in some cases, your friends’ mothers or your neighbors. It may have been grandmothers.

We honor them today.

We honor the mothers we had.

We honor the mothers we wished we had as well, those perfect mothers that we dreamed about. We honor the ideal that no one ever realizes because everyone is human and imperfect.

That ideal is found only in God whose Fatherliness also includes the qualities of motherhood that can be reflected in our earthly mothers.

We honor the mothers (and fathers) we want to be. We honor the aspiration and the ideal and hold it high.

We honor the mothers of the future that we are training our girls to be.

We honor motherhood and all of the women of the church who have been, might have been, never were, or will be mothers – especially the older ones. The younger, we honor as sisters and mothers-to-be.

Happy Mother’s Day!