My first grandchild was born last week. 🙂
She’s a precious bit of perfectness and loved by so many on both sides of the family. And yet if you combine all the love that all of us feel for her, it’s nothing compared to the love of God towards her! So I found myself praying over her as I held her, that she would know Him.
Her name means “dedicated to prayer” — set aside for companionship and conversation with the Almighty God who created her. I look at this daughter-of-my-daughter, and I think of a verse I ‘found’ last month.
This is Psalm 86:16, which is one of King David’s psalms:
Turn to me and have mercy on me;
show Your strength on behalf of Your servant;
save me, because I serve You just as my mother did.
This is the NIV-UK version. Most other versions have “the son of Your maidservant,” but it means the same thing, doesn’t it? David was saying that his mother served the Lord, and he includes this as a reason for God to help him.
And that realization made me stop.
Here is David, the man whom God identified as having a heart focused and dedicated to Him… and David is saying that he learned to serve God from watching his mother serve God. He doesn’t credit his father Jesse or his famous great-grandfather Boaz whose names are written in history. He credits his mother, whose name has long since been forgotten.
As far as I can tell, this is the only place in the Bible where David’s mother is mentioned, but could anything better have been said of her?
I think not!
Her heart for God shaped history.
David, the most powerful and famous king of Israel, was chosen by God because of his heart for God… and here he says this was due to his mother.
David was a mighty warrior, but he said over and over again that his strength and his victory and his protection in battle came from God. And God said He did this for David because David was His servant. And David said his mother taught him to serve God.
Jesus’s lineage was defined by being a descendent of David… because God promised a lasting kingdom to David… because of what he learned from his mother.
Who was this woman? Was David her only son? Why, when Samuel told Jesse to call all his sons, did Jesse ignore David and not include him in that summons? We can only speculate, which might not be profitable.
But we can consider how David’s life would have been different if his mother had chosen not to serve God.
I think we can take it one step further and consider how different the entire nation of Israel – and maybe even the world – would be if this forgotten woman had not led her son in being the servant of God.
Just think about that for a minute!
I want to speak to you, young mother or older mother.
You who are tired and feeling overlooked and unappreciated as you make the daily sacrifices, and as you pray for your children in both the quiet moments and the noisy ones, and as you wearily fall asleep in the middle of your prayer time, giving your last precious waking moments to the God you serve.
The Eternal One sees you.
And He has a plan.
He sees your heart. If your heart is His, then that’s all He needs.
You, overlooked mother, are a very important part of His plan.
Don’t be jealous of those who appear to be powerful in the ‘Now.’
For you, as a mother, have the power to shape the Future. Through you, God will change the world.
Just keep your heart dedicated to Him.
He will do the rest.