Our town of Collinsville has a fine Main Street, filled with restaurants and businesses. One business specializing in quilts has the clever name, “O’ Sew Personal.” That name reminds me of one of the sweetest stories about mothers in the Bible.
A man named Elkanah had two wives. (Some men did that back in the days of the Old Testament. In our New Testament times, it’s only one man and one woman. One man, one woman symbolizes the union of Christ with His bride the Church). Wife Peninnah teased and mocked wife Hannah for not having children. A pious woman, Hannah took her heartbreak to the Lord in prayer. Rev. Ken Klaus of The Lutheran Hour used to say that when you pray, sometimes the Lord’s answer is “yes.” Other times the Lord says, “no, but I’ll give you something better.” Well, the Lord did give Hannah a child, Samuel. In profound gratitude to God, Hannah literally gave Samuel back to the Lord. When Samuel had been weaned, Elkanah and Hannah took him to live with the priest Eli in Shiloh. Now, here’s the sweet verse. “Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy clothed with a linen ephod. And his mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice.” (1 Samuel 2:18-19). O’ Sew Personal!
There may be some philosophizing and theologizing about motherhood, but I suspect most people observed Mother’s Day by thinking of the little, personal things that mom did for us. Sewing. Cooking. Disciplining. Worrying. Loving. And for many of us, leading us to Jesus and His Church. The first great commandment is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Hannah knew that. Making a little robe for her son was honoring God’s second great commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18; see also Matthew 22:34-40). If you think of our relationship with God as vertical, the little, often unnoticed things we do for family and others, is the horizontal. Both are true worship of God. O’ Sew Personal!