Letters of Hope

Dear Moms,  

This Sunday is Mother’s Day, and I want to pay tribute to all you wonderful Mothers who have taken on the most challenging of careers involving awesome responsibilities – but providing the greatest rewards of any other possible choice.  Whether your children are Treasured Toddlers, Twinkley ‘Tweens, Terrific Teens, or Awesome Adults who have “left the nest,” you are to be applauded! 

Whether you are/were blest to be able to be a “stay-at-home Mom” and spend time with your children, watching them grow, develop and mature, or if you find/found it necessary to work away from home, your children will be monuments to your influence in their lives, and your legacy to the world! 

There are four calls by which the mother hen calls to her brood:-
1.  The call of night, when they need a shelter from the dampness and from the darkness;
2.  The call for food, when the hen would attract her little ones to pick up some dainty morsel that she has found for them;
3.  The call of danger, when the hawk descends, or the brood is in peril;  and
4.  The call of love when, with motherly desire and yearning, she would gather her brood where they may feel the softness of her breast-feathers and the warmth of her own body.  
(Mrs. Chas. E. Cowman in “Traveling Toward Sunrise”) 

“When the evening shadows are falling, when the night hawk is descending, when you need food in your hunger, or when My love yearns for a closer embrace, you shall find a safe and delightful shelter in the covert of My wings.”   (Signed, God.) 

Mothers can perhaps understand best the heart of God – a God Who loves and nurtures as a Mother nurtures the baby at her breast.  Though even she may “forget the child she has borne,” He avows, “I will NOT forget YOU!”  This truth is confirmed again when He says,  “As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you.”  (Isaiah 49:15,16; 66:13) 

“For You have been a shelter for me…I will abide in Your tabernacle for ever;  I will take refuge in the covert of Your wings.”  (Psalm 61:4) 

I recently discovered what a “covert” is!   It refers to the smaller feathers of a bird that cover the bases of the larger feathers of the wing and tail.  The word is used to imply a concealment, covering, shelter or hiding place.  Can you picture yourself hidden and protected under the “covert” of the wings of the Almighty?  What beautiful word pictures the Lord uses to impart His truth to us. 

“He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall trust…”  (Psalm 91:4) 

Under His wings I am safely abiding,
Though the night deepens and tempests are wild;
Still I can trust Him – I know He will keep me,
He has redeemed me and I am His child.

Under His wings, what a refuge in sorrow!
How the heart yearningly turns to His rest!
Often when earth has no balm for my healing,
There I find comfort and there I am blest.

Under His wings, O what precious enjoyment!
There will I hide till life’s trials are o’er;
Sheltered, protected, no evil can harm me,
Resting in Jesus I’m safe evermore.

Under His wings!  Under His wings!
Who from His love can sever?
Under His wings my soul shall abide,
Safely abide forever.

            (William O. Cushing, 1823-1902) 

“S/he that dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty – the nurturing El-Shaddai…He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings shall you take refuge.”  (Psalm 91:1,4) 

“Now may God, the Giver of HOPE, fill you with continual JOY and PEACE because you trust in Him, so that you may have abundant HOPE through the power of the Holy Spirit.”  (Rom. 15:13 Weymouth)                                                                       

In Agape, Eulene