Are you sharing the love of God in practical ways?
Many things in life confuse me. I’m OK with that. Sometimes I look things up and try and work them out, and other times I’m happy to be confused and not ‘in the know’. One of life’s little confusions that I looked up recently is why Mother’s Day in the USA and Mothering Sunday in the UK are celebrated at different times. It turns out they are not the same thing!
The 4th Sunday in Lent, 3 weeks before Easter Sunday is ‘Laetare Sunday’. Laetare means ‘rejoice’, and this Sunday was an opportunity to celebrate a pause in the Lenten fasting. As far back as the 16th century it is documented that servants and workers were given time off to return to the church where they received the sacrament of baptism, often referred to as your ‘Mother Church’. Mothering Sunday was under threat in the early 1900s when Mother’s Day appeared – a purely secular celebration of our biological mothers, but still a few people remember that Mothering Sunday is about more than just our mums.
I don’t know what your church background is like, or where you were baptised, and I don’t know if you even go to church. But can I encourage you to celebrate Mothering Sunday on the 27th of March by doing something practical to show God’s love to those who you ‘do church’ with? Thank those who have been ‘church’ to you, those who have been the gathered body of Jesus with you, those who have stood alongside and supported you, rejoiced with you and cried with you, encouraged and admonished you. It doesn’t have to be massive – a little handwritten note goes a really long way!
As it happens, this year I will be celebrating Mothering Sunday with my mum but not at my Mother Church (it no longer exists!). I will also be thanking God for those who were instrumental to my faith, those who pointed me to Jesus and who have not let me settle for less than God’s best!
Rachel, Inspire Missioner, UK.
