Today we continue our book study on The Mission of Motherhood by Sally Clarkson with chapter 2: Beautiful by Design. This book has a wealth of encouragement to grant vision and purpose for your role as a mother! Please join us!
Chapter 2 reaffirms the beauty of God’s purpose and design for us as mothers and the home. In our day and age, there is mass confusion, frustration, conflict over the role of a mother. I personally long to have a Biblical understanding of God’s original design. Much of this conflict is a result of the falleness and depravity of the human race.
In Genesis 1:26-27, we read about the creation of man and woman. We see that both men and women were made in the image and likeness of God. We were made to display His attributes, to reflect His likeness in our work, our leisure, and the purpose of our lives. Sally shares: “Each of us, man and woman, was given the purpose of partnering with God to rule over the world and to make it productive…Each of us is created with a capacity and purpose to be productive and creative in life – according to our drives, gifts, and strengths – and to glorify God as we rule over the specific dominion he has entrusted to us.”
Part of our original greatest privileges in our creation was the important responsibility to bring other human beings into the world. “These offspring were also to know the design of God. In the context of family, they would learn what it meant to be made in the righteous image of their Creator, to subdue the earth for God’s glory, and to populate the earth with their own children, thus producing a godly heritage.”
While women and men were created equal, and they both were assigned the joint task of bearing children and subduing the earth, they were uniquely created different. Eve by the very meaning of her name is a “life-giver” – she was created to bring life into the world! Her unique physical body was particularly designed for such a purpose - “He gave her a womb to bear a child, breasts to feed it, a more padded physique suited for cardling babies, and the emotional makeup, with all the right hormones, to be able to nurture and care for her children…According to recent research, he even structured our brains to make it easier for us to handle several tasks at once - as the tasks of caring for a household and small children demand.”
Wow! That is amazing to me! We all, whether we bear children or not, we are created to be life-givers!
“Not every woman will marry. Not every woman will be able to bear children. And yet all women have the God-given capacity to live in ways that beautifully and purposefully express their life-giving feminine design -their helper or cooperative approach to tasks, their ability to multitask, their nesting instincts and creative spirit. A woman’s body was made, in part, to bring life into the world, and that’s a good thing from God’s point of view. However, the common purpose for all woman is to glorify God in whatever circumstances and boundaries of life we find ourselves, trusting him to show us how we can best use our gifts for him.”
Consider…are we being life-givers in our domain or life-takers? Are we sucking life out of our families and friends by our wrong attitudes, pride, bitterness or frustration at where God has placed us or called us to in this season.
With the fall of mankind, recording in Genesis 3:1-6, Sally points out: “humans no longer reasoned as God reasoned, and they began to make up their own theories about their purpose in life.” Satan sought to attach the foundation of the family, which was designed by God to be the stable foundation of life. Rather than considering how we are created to serve and love one another, a self-centered approach to life results from sin. Children tend to be seen as burdens rather than blessings (Ps. 127), a monetary expense rather than a gift to be cherished, parents tend to depend upon their children to fulfill their own emotional needs, and children become self-centered little people as a result. We can so easily loose sight of passing on a legacy of righteousness to the next generation as we get caught up in a culture of personal fulfillment.
What a glorious truth that God is not finished with us yet! Even though we may throw aside his original purpose and design, He is beautifully transforming us through the sacrifice of Christ Jesus, that we might walk in newness of life, and take hold again that purpose of being life-givers in all that we do!
What stood out to you in this chapter? Please feel free to share a quote, a prayer, or anything that the Lord has been challenging you with thus far. How can we seek to fulfill God’s purpose of being life-givers rather than life-takers?
Shannon asked:
