Psalm 91
Mother’s Day 2011
While as imperfect as everything in this world short of God’s love in Jesus Christ, the bond between mother and child is still wonderfully holy. What God knits together in the womb with heavenly thread, moms take and weave into an unbreakable bond for a human lifetime. The bond may get stretched and torn and twisted, the umbilical cord severed, but never ever are these two souls detached for good. No aging process, no count of time, no years alive or years deceased, can quite measure it. It is eternally crafted and binding, generation to generation to generation.
Sometimes, this bond is blessed with pure Hallmark moments and resembles all those idealized characters presented in so many television commercials and shows. Such moments are faith-affirming, lovely, and have a way of joyfully dancing in our memory banks. For instance, I can honestly say that one of the most blessed touches in my life was whenever my mom would gently run her fingers through my childhood hair in order to calm and comfort me.
In other times and circumstances, for all sorts of reasons from trivial to tragic, the bond falls into great duress. Heart-wrenching disappointments and deep streams of shame stain it. Trust feels tested to a breaking point. In these moments, idealized depictions of the bond cut painfully deep as a reality begs to differ.
Come what may, though, I firmly believe God’s blessing on mom and child is never revoked. The love of Christ covers and bears and uplifts all.
Throughout this past week, my heart was anchored with one particular circumstance that weighs heavily and delicately on the mother-child blessed bond. It is still anchored here today and being held in conversation with our reading of Psalm 91. This Mother’s Day, my head and heart sits especially with mothers of sons and daughters currently serving in our nation’s military during this time of war.
For every generation whose children are called to courageously serve our country and the great cause of life, liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness for all, there are moms who wait at home. They wait with anxiety about their child’s safety and well-being. They wait with tremendous pride. They wait trusting in the formation they helped build in their child as well as the formation he or she received during military training. They wait with husbands, their other children, their own mothers who may have had the same experience, immediate and extended families, close friends, other moms, and with supportive congregations and communities. And they wait absolutely pregnant with prayer.
Waiting in prayer is the bedrock of one particularly inspirational group I discovered by way of the internet. The full name of the group has been reduced to an acronym for easier identification. Appropriately enough, it’s called M.O.M.S. This is a bit creative given that the group’s full name is Moms of Military Prayer and Support Group. According to their website, www.momsofmilitary.com, they are a strictly apolitical network existing not to march on Washington but to “stand against their own worry and grief that sometimes seems overwhelming.”[i] They were founded in Orange County, CA and now offer prayer and support across America. M.O.M.S. was founded by Jeanette Hicks in 2001, when her son Matthew left for his first deployment with the US Navy. She felt so isolated on that day, so in need of someone to be with who understood her heart. So she returned to her church, put an announcement in the bulletin, and soon began praying regularly with just one other mom in the kitchen. And so began a ministry that now finds her as a member of the Presidential Prayer Team and that meets the devotional and emotional needs of so very many.
Praying without ceasing keeps moms of military glued together as they pass the time apart from their children by keeping a busy schedule, creating scrapbooks, physically getting in shape in honor of the physical endurance needed by their military child, sending care packages, journal writing, and using technology to keep in touch with their sons and daughters in ways never imagined by previous generations of moms of military. I read of one military son who mentioned how this communication is a great support because it always helps to know everything is okay back home. When I reflect on M.O.M.S. and other prayer ministries like it, I praise the Lord that the deep need to find refuge in the promises of God are met.
Refuge is the prayer of Psalm 91. Its poetic words call for constant trust, confidence and reliance on the promise of God to be with us in times of trouble, to bear us up in the presence of all dark terrors. As with all Scripture, the full meaning of the images in this Psalm need to be studied in their ancient context, but through the Holy Spirit they also find root in the hearts of those who pray it today for themselves as well as for the precious ones whose safety and well-being they worry about.
The Psalm promises that God will never allow evil to befall and strike down those who love Him, who know His holy name. It offers assurance that angels guard us and that God’s beloved will be blessed with long life and shown salvation. I have to be honest, as beautiful as this all sounds, as much as it gives initial comfort to very raw fears, I wrestle with it. I do fully and faithfully trust that God is with us, that we are under holy shelter and upheld by holy wings, that the Almighty is our refuge in all and through all. Yet I also cannot be a brother in Christ who asks anyone, especially a parent with a child serving in the military, to just pray this Psalm as if it is some sort of magical charm. Psalm 91, nor any other promises of God in Scripture, should ever be considered and used as a protective charm. To do so would not explain why it seems to joyfully work for some in harm’s way while heartbreakingly failing others.
Psalm 91 and all promises of God found in Scripture instead help us confess with faith, hope and love that God’s redeeming power in Jesus Christ is the most powerful force on earth.
It spiritually and physically lives in refuge rooms where mothers meet regularly for emotionally raw moments as they give updates on their children serving and protecting for the cause of freedom and justice. It lives to provide blessed assurance that though the cost of discipleship if often overwhelmingly steep in this world that is still so mired in sinful violence instead of the peace of Christ, this discipleship is never exercised in vain. In the shelter of Christ’s eternal care, we find strength to endure all and to find deep meaning in service and sacrifice.
Jeanette Hicks offered witness to this reality in one interview I read. She said, “When our loved one come back from their deployment, the first thing they want to do is come to a MOMS meeting. They want to thank us for our prayers because they’ll say they really felt them. They also want to thank us for taking care of their mother, giving them a place of support while they were away.”[ii]
So on this Mother’s Day, may the generations of faithful military mothers especially inspire us all to pray without ceasing, to be absolutely pregnant with prayer, to keep gathering and seeing ourselves and those we love dearly as living in the safe shelter of God’s abiding love. And may we be sure to give an extra embrace to those moms and grandmothers in our church family and in our communities who need a supportive reminder of this refuge this very day. Amen.
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