Debate about the origins of Mother’s Day continues among those who care about such things but one thing is sure. The first public observance of Mother’s Day as we know it in the United States occurred on May 10, 1908, in Grafton, W.Va. If one visits that city, one will see the International Mother’s Day Shrine. The shrine is the former Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, where 405 children helped Anna Jarvis celebrate that first Mother’s Day.
Earlier attempts to organize mothers for various causes had been made. Ann Jarvis, mother of Anna, tried to organize women during the Civil War to work for better sanitation among troops both Northern and Southern. Her effort was called Mothers’ Day Work Clubs.
A decade later, Julia Ward Howe attempted to organize mothers into a mother’s day lobby against war. This effort was popular in the New England area for a time but died out by the late 1870s.
But when Anna Jarvis organized Mother’s Day in 1908, in part to honor the memory of her mother, the idea was an instant success. The state of West Virginia became the first to recognize Mother’s Day in 1910, and four years later, President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday in May to be a national celebration of Mother’s Day.
Mother’s Day is celebrated in most of the nations of the world. The May date is the most popular date, but a large number of countries use the first day of spring. Some countries continue an ancient tradition of celebrating Mother’s Day as part of the Christian celebration of Lent, observing Mothering Day on the fourth Sunday of Lent.
Whatever the date chosen, the day recognizes the importance of mothering — not the biological act of giving birth but the lifelong investment of caring and nurturing, which make up the core of motherhood. Like Anna Jarvis, those of us who have benefited from such relationships proudly acknowledge the important contributions made to our lives by this mothering.
But long before there was Mother’s Day, the Bible spoke about the importance of mothering. When God began to make the nation of Israel, He used the nurturing care of a mother to teach her son to choose God’s ways over the pagan ways of the Pharaoh. Moses was reared as the adopted son of Pharaoh and was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Yet the care and nurture of his nanny caused him to identify with the Hebrew slave people rather than with the privileged few of Pharaoh’s house. Of course, his "nanny" was really his mother, the Bible explains, and her careful teachings over the years caused her son to choose the ways of God.
Who cannot be amazed, as well as thankful, at the providential way God used mothering to shape the identity of the Jewish people?
The New Testament provides another powerful example. Acts 16:1–2 presents Timothy as a disciple of whom the "brothers" spoke well. What follows is an account of this young man joining the apostle Paul on his missionary journey. In time, Timothy became like a son in the ministry to the apostle.
It is not until much later that one understands the important role of mothering in this young man’s life. In 2 Timothy 1:5, one learns that the Christian faith "first lived" in his grandmother Lois and mother, Eunice. In 2 Timothy 3:15, one reads that Timothy had learned the Holy Scriptures from infancy. He did not learn from his father, a Greek (or nonbeliever). Timothy learned from his mother and his grandmother.
One can only imagine the hours the child spent listening to his mother and grandmother read and reflect on Scripture. One can only imagine the weeks and months and years these two women spent cultivating the gospel seeds planted in Timothy’s young heart.
The result of this motherly nurturing? The apostle wrote that he was persuaded the sincere faith of Timothy’s grandmother and mother now lived in Timothy. In turn, Timothy played a key role in the evangelization of the ancient world. Timothy was part of the team that preached the gospel in Europe for the first time (Acts 16:12–15).
In neither case does the Bible celebrate the biological act of giving birth. Rather it is the lifelong process of caring for, of encouraging, of cultivating, of teaching, of guiding, of praying for, of modeling and of investing in another that the Bible honors.
It is living before a child in such a way that the child is empowered to become what God created him or her to be, to love God through faith in Jesus Christ, to act boldly in accordance with the direction of God’s Holy Spirit and to live righteously before all people.
This kind of mothering was important to Moses and to Timothy. This kind of mothering is important for every human being. It is this kind of mothering that is honored on Mother’s Day.
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