Home Sweet Home: Father God with a Mother’s Heart

Parenting in a Christian Home like Father God-Mother Hen.

The Lord’s love is compared to both a father and a mother in the second Song of Moses, Deuteronomy 32: 18, “You neglected the Rock who had fathered you, you forgot the God who had given you birth.” God’s parental love and their rejection of that love highlights just how thoughtless the sins of Israel truly were. This verse continues a thread through Scripture, that the Father has a mother’s love, that the Father has a maternal side to His love. Since the Hebrew word for mercy and compassion comes from the root word for “womb,” it is easy to believe that there is something motherly about the Father’s care and compassion for each of us. God’s compassion is the same as that of a mother who loves the child she has carried and borne. Isaiah says this in 66:13: “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.” And also in Isaiah 49:15: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” Even Jesus compares Himself to a mother hen in Matthew 23:37: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” God is referred to as Father, but He often displays the heart of a mother.

Womb is one of the root words for mercy in the Hebrew Bible. The word “rachem” is translated in Scripture as mercy, compassion, and womb. In the Hebrew mind, the womb is much more than the sacred place in a woman that enables the unborn baby to safely develop till birth. Womb also became a metaphor for mercy because of its linguistic roots. The Hebrew word rachem is intended to mean mercy-womb. God formed each of us with rachem when we were mere unborns, and we were conceived and nourished within His rachem, the mother’s mercy-womb. The baby within the woman is the ideal time to extend God’s compassion to that human being inside of her. The developing baby utterly depends on a mercy-womb. And God wants Himself to be experienced as our womb-sanctuary, our safe place in Him, our refuge and shelter. God Himself yearns to be experienced as a womb of mercy for each of us, a refuge and shelter and safe haven. The purpose of our lives is to live in God’s rachem, God’s womb of love.

The Prodigal Son Story. We can’t possibly top the vision that Jesus had of His Father in the Prodigal Son parable. Could we find a more touching picture of His Father that had the heart of a mother? Perhaps this is why there is no mother in this parable… The Father embraced both roles! Consider what the Father demonstrated in the story:

1. A father who didn’t take offense when personally rejected by his son and asked to split his inheritance before the father even dies;
2. A father who patiently endured humiliation at having his own son waste his inheritance;
3. A father who responded with compassion when his wayward son returns home penniless;
4. A father who was actively waiting for his son to return, on a continual lookout for his defeated son, a father who seemed poised to show mercy;
5. A father who publically degraded himself by running, which fathers aren’t supposed to do, to meet his son;
6. A father who physically embraced his wastrel son, saving him from the eventual village gauntlet;
7. A father who continued to pour out grace and compassion by repeatedly kissing his renegade son. This is a reversal of the typical scenario in which the repentant son is expected to kiss the father’s hands or feet;
8. A father who restores the prodigal son to full family status, giving him the father’s feasting robe, the family signet ring, and a pair of sandals that would distinguish the son from hired servants;
9. A father who threw a huge village feast with a fatted calf, feeding at least 100 people. Instead of rejection, the father threw a celebration;
10. A father who would absorb another public insult by leaving his post as the host at the feast in order to search for his ungrateful elder son;
11. A father who patiently accepts the elder son’s unwarranted insult and bitter attitude.

This is how the Son pictures the Father. Who wouldn’t join His family?

We are commanded in Scripture to be merciful as the Lord is merciful. So it seems vital for each parent to show mercy to the children in their care in the spirit of rachem, to provide through our love-in-action a mercy-womb…  a safe place for the child to be fed and strengthened and cherished. Becoming a mercy-womb for their children means that parents provide a safe place through their love for each child to grow and be nurtured. Both are intended to become a shelter and refuge for their children, a womb of mercy, just like our Lord.