First Notes: Mothers and Fathers, Sisters and Brothers

Dear Church Family, 

Sunday we celebrated a blessed Mother's Day. We dedicated four children to the Lord, prayed for those who grieve on Mother's Day, and celebrated the gift and blessing that our mothers bring. 

Essentially, Sunday was about legacy. None of us are who we are apart from others. We all need the encouragement that comes from those who go before us.

I shared a little bit about my own legacy of faith that came from my grandmother, Dorothy, and then my mother, Julie. My story is like so many others in church history. 

Augustine of Hippo — one of the greatest theologians in Christian history — lived a wild and dissolute young life. His mother Monica prayed for him for over seventeen years without seeing any change. She once went to a bishop in tears, begging him to talk some sense into her son. 

The bishop gently turned her away, but said something she held onto for the rest of those long years: "It is not possible that the son of these tears should perish." 

When Augustine finally came to faith as a grown man, he wrote about it in his Confessions — and the person he credits most, after God, is Monica. She didn’t Not argue him into belief, but never let him forget where he came from and who he was made to be. She held the image of who he could be long before he could hold it himself.

Eric Liddell — the Scottish sprinter immortalized in the film Chariots of Fire — nearly gave up competitive running because of pressure from supporters of his missionary work who felt it was a distraction from God's call. 

It was his sister and his mother who encouraged him to see his gift differently. His mother told him that the speed in his legs was not separate from his faith — it was an expression of it. She helped him see that God had put something in him that was meant to glorify God, not compete with God. 

That reframing changed everything. Liddell went on to win Olympic gold and famously said, "When I run, I feel God’s pleasure." His mother “fanned the flame” of God’s gifting in Eric’s life and we’re still talking about it. 

John Newton, the former slave trader who wrote "Amazing Grace," had a mother named Elizabeth who died when he was just seven years old. But before she died, she spent those seven years doing one thing above all else — praying over her son and speaking scripture into him. 

She didn't live to see the result. But Newton later said that in his darkest years of rebellion and moral ruin on the slave ships, he could never fully escape the memory of his mother's prayers and her voice. He called those early prayers "the seed that finally broke through the hardest ground." 

He came to faith as a grown man and credited his mother's intercession as the thread God used to pull him back. She never knew. But she prayed — and she had told him she was praying. That knowledge stayed with him for decades.

What can we learn from these stories? We can certainly see the power of prayer, even after the one who prayed has passed on. We can also see the importance of naming gifts in others and encouraging the young people around them to run the best race they can run. 

Who can you impact this week? Who can you pray for? Who can you bless? 

I'm so glad to be a part of the family of God where we have spiritual fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, all working together in God's household. We are not alone. And when we work well together, encouraging one another in passing down the legacy of faith, we too can feel God's pleasure. 

Much love to you! Have a great week.

Pastor Brent