Thought for the week 9 May 2021

Welcome to our services of worship today. I am conducting worship at Pleasant Point this morning, which is my privilege as their Interim Moderator.

Today of course is Mother’s Day and so we celebrate and honour our mothers. I found the history of Mother’s Day as we now celebrate it interesting, especially as it follows close after our national commemoration of our service men and women (ANZAC Day) and has a strong ethos of striving for peace.

The modern holiday of Mother’s Day was first celebrated in 1907, when Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother at St Andrew’s Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia. Her campaign to make Mother’s Day a recognized holiday in the United States began in 1905, the year her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, died. Ann Jarvis had been a peace activist who cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War, and created Mother’s Day Work Clubs to address public health issues. She and another peace activist and suffragette Julia Ward Howe had been urging for the creation of a Mother’s Day dedicated to peace, calling on mothers everywhere to  promote the “amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.  Anna Jarvis wanted to honour this and to set aside a day to   honour all mothers because she believed a mother is “the person who has done more for you than anyone in the world”. (Wikipedia)

Mother’s Day quickly became commercialized through Hallmark cards and confectionary sellers which grieved Jarvis deeply. So much so that she organised boycotts against the day she founded!

However you celebrate Mother’s Day today, may you be true to the intent and spirit of the day.

Blessings,

Brent Richardson