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Mother's Day & Baptism sunday
May 11, 2025

9am contemporary

11am traditional

ordinary people... extraordinary Lives

Empty Things | Real Moms

1 Samuel 12:19-24

Dear Grace Family,

Mother’s Day is a BIG Deal … as it should be.  We Celebrate the women in our lives with flowers, chocolates, special meals, cards, poems, warm sentiments.  The first Mother’s Day in the USA took place in 1908.  Six years later President Woodrow Wilson made it official … and made it national.

It's also a complicated day.  Not everyone, you may be one of them, had a mom who cared for them, loved them, supported them.  Some of us carry a measure of sorrow on Mother’s Day. Many of us simply miss our moms.  We miss picking up the phone, talking about big or small details of life, hearing them laugh, sharing stories from our past, knowing our moms are within reach.

And still we celebrate.  We give God thanks for our moms, for mom’s who are moms even though they have no children of their own, for moms who are no longer present.  We are grateful for moms who bore us, raised us, encouraged us.  Even the best of moms still had their moments, their brokenness, and their tears.
In our passage this morning, from 1 Samuel chapter 12, there is: 1) an admission that all has not gone as it should have gone, 2) a recognition of empty things, and 3) an affirmation of the power of prayer.  Moms, at their best, help us with all three.

And so, this morning in particular we pay special attention to our moms (it better be more than once a year!).  And, we thank God for placing us in families, giving us parents, even when it may not have gone as He intended, or we had hoped.  Moms who get it half-right have given us a gift we did not deserve and cannot repay.

In Christ,
Curt McFarland