Listen to your father who begot you, do not despise your mother when she is old. Buy truth and do not sell: wisdom, instruction, understanding! The father of a just person will exult greatly; whoever begets a wise son will rejoice in him. Let your father and mother rejoice; let her who bore you exult.
Proverbs 23:22-25
As we celebrate Mother’s Day weekend this year, we will be giving special attention to the mothers in our life. We will give them special attention, cards and gifts as signs of our appreciation and love. We will focus on the important place they have in our lives, not only in giving us birth, but also the nurturing, teaching, protecting and motivating that they have provided us throughout our lives.
But as the passage above from the biblical Book of Proverbs reminds us, this is a good time to reflect not only on what our mothers have done for us, but also on how we give back to our mothers. As the passage states, our mothers rejoice when we live a good life. And this short passage gives us a number of ways in which we can do just that.
To “buy truth” encourages us to always seek out what is right. We are seeing more and more examples today where truth just does not seem to matter. People are willing to say and to believe anything. When that happens, people become willing to do anything whether it is right or not. And as we can see all around us these days, this way of thinking leads to chaos in society.
The passage goes on to tell us not to sell, or to even give away, the virtues of wisdom, instruction and understanding. Wisdom is presented as a very valuable virtue throughout the Bible. Those who were seen as wise were seen to be especially close to God. And so in many places the Bible encourages us to search out wisdom. That alone tells us that wisdom is not something that just happens. But we have to make the effort to learn how to take what we know and use it in the right way. There are many people who know a lot of things but don’t know how to use what they know. Wisdom is developing the ability to use what we know in ways that will benefit humanity.
Of course it all starts with an openness to instruction so that we can gain the knowledge we need. So often today we see so many of our youth who do not recognize the value of an education. They make no effort to learn and won’t listen to any instruction that others may provide.
Understanding is another virtue that seems to be in short supply these days. The divisions we see between people, the feelings of hate and of fear that are becoming so prevalent all come from a lack of understanding each other. Like the other virtues, we have to make an effort to grow in this virtue. To understand one another, we have to take the time to listen to each other, to withhold judgments and to be open to have others make an impact on our lives.
All of this may not seem to have bearing on Mother’s Day, but again we turn to the Scriptures. A mother rejoices and exults when her children are wise. The cards and gifts and special attention will make her happy. She will be glad to know that we appreciate the role that she plays in our lives. But she rejoices when she can see that her children have grown in wisdom, knowledge and understanding. Children that live by the truth will work for the good of all humanity. It’s an effort that we need to sustain throughout our lives, not just for one day. But from a biblical point of view, this is what will be really meaningful to our mothers.
