Acts 1:1-11
Luke 24:44-53
Ephesians 1:15-23
“Stay with me, Mummy!”
In the church today, we celebrate Ascension Sunday – remembering the day that the Risen Jesus was taken up into heaven.
In the world today, we celebrate Mothers’ Day – giving thanks for the women who nurtured, loved, and protected us in our growing up, and perhaps still today.
The two celebrations are not related, but they happen to land on the same day this year, inviting us to make connections between our faith and our family life.
We may note that God is often described as being like a heavenly Father to us – providing for our needs, loving us unconditionally, guiding and directing us to become the faithful people he hopes we will be. But the Bible does not refer to God exclusively in masculine metaphors. There are, albeit few, feminine metaphors used to describe God in the Bible too.
One of the common images is God as a mother bird sheltering her children under her wings. We see this in Ruth 2:12 – “May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” The psalms also pick up this mother bird image, like in … Read more »