It has been difficult for me to choose a text to preach on this Mother's Day.  I thought I had picked my text a month ago, but God has been tugging me towards these goals:

• I want to suspend Children's Church and have them stay with their mothers in the sanctuary for the message. This of course affects what I preach on and how I tell the story.  I want to tell the children how important mothers are.  Since the people who work in Children's Church are all mothers (well, other than Zakk), I think they would be too modest to throw as much importance on motherhood as is warranted.
• This can be a difficult day for the women who for one reason or another have been unable to have children of their own.  I also know that I have at least one adoptive mother in one of the congregations.  For this reason, I want to honor the contributions all women make toward the development and safety of our children.
• I want to stress the value of women in a way that strengthens marriages.

That's a tall order, I know.  So now you see why I've been looking for the story that exemplifies these points.

My main text is going to be Exodus 1:15-2:10 -- the story surrounding Moses' birth.  I like this story because there are many brave women who are involved in saving and raising Moses to be a man of God.  There are:

• Shiphrah and Puah -- the Hebrew midwives who defied Pharaoh's orders to kill Hebrew boys immediately following childbirth.
• Jochebed -- Moses' mother who hid him for three months to save him.  Then she loved him enough to build the papyrus boat and float him down the Nile.
• Pharaoh's daughter  -- Who defied her father's orders and adopted this child as her own to save him.