By Dr. Alex McFarland for THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR
“All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” — Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died when he was just nine, yet he attributed all his successes to those nine years. What do we owe to our mothers? Far more than I could write in 1,000 words, or 1,000 books. If you’re a human, you have a mother. Whether she is living or dead, you should thank God for her.
Mothers have been celebrated throughout history in art, music, and literature. One of Vincent van Gogh’s most famous paintings is Peasant Woman with Child on Her Lap. Van Gogh was influenced by French painter Jean-François Millet. Millet painted peasants, largely in protest of the Industrial Revolution that transformed the bucolic French countryside into factories and dirty, impoverished cities.
Millet’s The Charity was an impressionist rendering of a peasant woman handing a piece of bread to her daughter. Like a typical mother, her eyes and hand beckoned the girl to share with an old man outside the cottage door. To Van Gogh and other impressionists, blind industrial progress exemplified the loss of culture, values, and family. The impressionists’ images of lovingly rendered mothers and children reminded a declining culture of the value of family.
Motherhood in the Bible was esteemed by society and cherished by women, so much so that women like Sarah, Hannah, and Elizabeth grieved if they were childless. Compare that to today’s dilapidated social structure, where people are confused about what a mother — or a woman — is and is not. Motherhood, of all statuses, should never be degraded.
