Gracious God, our heavenly Father, we thank you for the beautiful design of your creation, and the inclusion of mothers in your orderly world. Whether our mothers were accessible or aloof, nurturing or narcissistic, competent or overcome, in any case we are here today because of them and are grateful for life itself. So, we thank you for our mothers, and pray that we might live into their best vision for us: responsible, faithful, caring, and confident individuals.
We pray for moms with children at home, going through the surprises, the difficulties, and the messes of motherhood. Please endow them with wisdom and patience, and release them from the pressure of perfection. Help them to be honest about their own needs and failures, and give them resources to do the best they can to love their children well. Meanwhile, we also ask that you would move their kids’ hearts to show gratitude, respect, and honor; and bless them—parents and children— with golden moments of forgiveness, laughter, and understanding.
Please provide the time mothers need for spiritual nurture and Christian fellowship, so that they might be fed and encouraged rather than drained by heavy demands.
We affirm together all the women who show motherly commitment: grandmas, step-moms, foster and adoptive parents among them. I pray, Lord, that the sacrifices they make would foster family health and that the blessing would return to them hundredfold.
We also lift up those who are waiting for motherhood that has been thwarted by infertility, miscarriage, or stillbirth. Soothe the sorrowful hearts in our fellowship today with your presence and your tears.
For those, Lord, who have experienced the loss of a son or daughter, or who have said a final goodbye to their mother, minister to their grief this morning with the hope of the resurrection and trust in your compassion.
We lift up with heavy hearts the many children around the world orphaned by war, famine, crime, and disease. Wrap each one in your love, and help us to participate in this most basic of duties, to care for widows and orphans in their distress.
And finally, I pray for us all, that you would help us to show our protective love and hopeful affirmation to each other, so that it may truly be said of us that we are “Mother Church” to one another.
In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord,
Amen.