She Trusted God With You

Someone said it well: a mother is your first friend, your best friend, your forever friend.

Scripture has been telling that story far longer than most people realize.

Long before John ever wrote the book of Revelation, the Hebrew prophets were already using the image of a woman in labor to describe the deepest kind of hope. Not the easy kind. The kind that costs something.

The Prophet Isaiah wrote: "Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she gave birth to a boy. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Can a land be born in one day? Can a nation be brought forth all at once? As soon as Zion travailed, she also brought forth her sons." (Isaiah 66:7–9) Isaiah was describing the nation of Israel under the name Zion, a mother figure in Scripture who carries the weight of God's promises and labors through suffering toward a redemption she cannot yet see.

Micah saw the same picture and named it plainly: "Is there no king among you, or has your counselor perished, that agony has gripped you like a woman in childbirth? Writhe and labor to give birth, Daughter of Zion, like a woman in childbirth." (Micah 4:9–10) The Daughter of Zion is in pain. She is not in pain because God has abandoned her. She is in pain because she is about to bring something into the world that will change everything.
This is where Mary enters the story.

Mary was a young Jewish woman living inside that same long tradition of waiting, laboring, and trusting God with what He had promised. When the angel Gabriel appeared to her and told her she would conceive and bear the Son of God, the Savior of the world, she did not have a plan. She did not have the approval of her community. She did not have a way to explain what was happening to the people who would judge her for it. She had nothing but a word from God and the decision of what to do with it.

She said: "Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word." (Luke 1:38)

That is not passive agreement. That is the bravest sentence a human being has ever spoken. It means: I will trust you with this child even when I cannot see what you are doing with him. Even when it costs me everything. Even when the world does not understand.
Jesus came into the world not for one people or one nation, but for every person who has ever drawn breath. He came as the fulfillment of every promise God had ever made, the answer to every cry of every mother who had ever prayed in the dark over a child she could not fix. And Mary, trusting God with Him, became a picture of every mother who has ever done the same thing.

She said yes at the beginning when the angel came. She stayed at the foot of the cross in the middle when everything looked like it was ending wrong. She was in the upper room at the end when the Spirit fell and the Church was born. She never let go of her faith in God or her love for her son at any point in the story. Even through the parts that looked like loss.

That is what your mother has been doing for you. That is what your wife is doing for your children right now.

Jesus reached back for this same image when He wanted to describe what faithful endurance through dark days ultimately leads to. He said: "Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world. Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you." (John 16:21–22)

He was speaking to His disciples about His death and what was coming after it. But in doing so He gave every mother who has ever prayed through suffering a theological anchor. The pain is not the end of the story. The labor is not the destination. There is a joy on the other side that will make the anguish of the waiting feel like a distant memory.

Every mother who has ever prayed over a child walking in the wrong direction knows that labor. Every mother who has fought for her children in the quiet places no one else sees knows that labor. Every mother who has held the faith for a family even when the family was not holding it for themselves knows exactly what the prophets were describing and what Jesus was pointing toward.

The pain is real. The labor is real. And so is the joy that is coming.

If your mother is still living, call her this week. Not just on Sunday. Call her because she has been trusting God with you longer than you have been trusting God with yourself. And she deserves to hear that you know it.

If your mother has gone on ahead of you, carry her forward. Let the faith she planted in you outlast everything else.

And to every mother reading this: the image Scripture keeps returning to is not a woman who had it all figured out. It is a woman in labor, in the unknown, holding onto a promise she could not yet see, trusting that what was coming was worth everything it was costing her.
You are more like that picture than you know.

Isaiah said Zion travailed and brought forth. Mary trusted and brought forth. The promise of God has never once failed the mother who refused to let go of it.

The joy is still coming. And no one will take it away from you.