Mother Questions

10/20/07

Scripture:

Life is filled with questions.  I remember the time my brother and I were hanging out at the old Caldwell Mercantile.   A group of guys were standing or sitting around a pot-bellied wood burning stove.  The stove would sizzle when one of the fellows would spit his tobacco juice into the open burning flame.  At some point my brother asked a question.  One of the guys replied, Butch, why would you ask a dumb question like that?  Another man retorted, Hey, don’t you know that the only dumb question is the one that’s never asked!

On the backside of Mt. Horeb, God confronts Moses.  Moses responses seem to be mostly questions.  In fact much of life is making response to questions.  There’s the story about the pastor who is called upon to deal with a couple of ill-disciplined children.  One of the boys is brought into the pastor’s office.  The pastor bends forward and peers into the eyes of the boy.  The question comes.  Where is God?  The boy casts his eyes downward, heart rate increases.  The question comes again, but with more force.  I asked you, where is God?  The boy becomes agitated.  He fidgets.  The preacher now booms out, one more time, where is God???  The boy leaves the room and quickly runs and hides in the closet.  His brother hunts for him and finds him in the closet.  What are you doing, hiding in here?  Brother, you won’t believe this, but God is missing and the preacher and our family think we did it!

The power of questions!  Especially mother’s questions!  I would imagine that even Moses fell under the gazing eye of his mother and her questions.  Part of me believes that the “four mother questions” are genetically woven into the mothers being.  It is a rare moment for a child to escape any one of these questions before the adult years.  In fact, I will venture to say that these four mother questions very easily transfer into being “the four wife questions.” 

Now, at a distance from childhood and parenting, I begin to understand that these great mother questions are, in fact, profound.  They are the great Life Questions.  They are questions of accountability! Let’s check these questions out. 

I.        What on earth have you done?

II.      What in the name of the Lord are you doing?

III.    What will you think of next?

IV.   Who do you think you are?

Conclusion:  Whether responding to these questions as individuals or as a community of Christ-followers, our responses determine the legacies that we make and leave behind. 

Sermon Multimedia:

• Mother Questions

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