mothers

150:4.3“Are not two spar­rows sold for a penny? And yet I de­clare that not one of them is for­got­ten in God’s sight. Know you not that the very hairs of your head are all num­bered? Fear not, there­fore; you are of more value than a great many spar­rows. Be not ashamed of my teach­ing; go forth pro­claim­ing peace and good will, but be not de­ceived—peace will not al­ways at­tend your preach­ing. I came to bring peace on earth, but when men re­ject my gift, di­vi­sion and tur­moil re­sult. When all of a fam­ily re­ceive the gospel of the king­dom, truly peace abides in that house; but when some of the fam­ily en­ter the king­dom and oth­ers re­ject the gospel, such di­vi­sion can pro­duce only sor­row and sad­ness. La­bor earnestly to save the whole fam­ily lest a man’s foes be­come those of his own house­hold. But, when you have done your ut­most for all of ev­ery fam­ily, I de­clare to you that he who loves fa­ther or mother more than this gospel is not wor­thy of the king­dom.”

163:3.4And then said Pe­ter, “But, Mas­ter, we have left ev­ery­thing to fol­low you, what then shall we have?” And Je­sus spoke to all of the twelve: “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, there is no man who has left wealth, home, wife, breth­ren, par­ents, or chil­dren for my sake and for the sake of the king­dom of heaven who shall not re­ceive man­i­fold more in this world, per­haps with some per­se­cu­tions, and in the world to come eter­nal life. But many who are first shall be last, while the last shall of­ten be first. The Fa­ther deals with his crea­tures in ac­cor­dance with their needs and in obe­di­ence to his just laws of mer­ci­ful and lov­ing con­sid­er­a­tion for the wel­fare of a uni­verse.

171:2.2“You who would fol­low af­ter me from this time on, must be will­ing to pay the price of whole­hearted ded­i­ca­tion to the do­ing of my Fa­ther’s will. If you would be my dis­ci­ples, you must be will­ing to for­sake fa­ther, mother, wife, chil­dren, broth­ers, and sis­ters. If any one of you would now be my dis­ci­ple, you must be will­ing to give up even your life just as the Son of Man is about to of­fer up his life for the com­ple­tion of the mis­sion of do­ing the Fa­ther’s will on earth and in the flesh.

177:2.5For more than an hour Je­sus and John con­tin­ued this dis­cus­sion of home life. The Mas­ter went on to ex­plain to John how a child is wholly de­pen­dent on his par­ents and the as­so­ci­ated home life for all his early con­cepts of ev­ery­thing in­tel­lec­tual, so­cial, moral, and even spir­i­tual since the fam­ily rep­re­sents to the young child all that he can first know of ei­ther hu­man or di­vine re­la­tion­ships. The child must de­rive his first im­pres­sions of the uni­verse from the mother’s care; he is wholly de­pen­dent on the earthly fa­ther for his first ideas of the heav­enly Fa­ther. The child’s sub­se­quent life is made happy or un­happy, easy or dif­fi­cult, in ac­cor­dance with his early men­tal and emo­tional life, con­di­tioned by these so­cial and spir­i­tual re­la­tion­ships of the home. A hu­man be­ing’s en­tire af­ter­life is enor­mously in­flu­enced by what hap­pens dur­ing the first few years of ex­is­tence.

68:2.6Hunger, van­ity, and ghost fear were con­tin­u­ous in their so­cial pres­sure, but sex grat­i­fi­ca­tion was tran­sient and spas­modic. The sex urge alone did not im­pel prim­i­tive men and women to as­sume the heavy bur­dens of home main­te­nance. The early home was founded upon the sex rest­less­ness of the male when de­prived of fre­quent grat­i­fi­ca­tion and upon that de­voted mother love of the hu­man fe­male, which in mea­sure she shares with the fe­males of all the higher an­i­mals. The pres­ence of a help­less baby de­ter­mined the early dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of male and fe­male ac­tiv­i­ties; the woman had to main­tain a set­tled res­i­dence where she could cul­ti­vate the soil. And from ear­li­est times, where woman was has al­ways been re­garded as the home.

180:6.7And since Je­sus knew they asked these ques­tions, he said: “Do you in­quire among your­selves about what I meant when I said that in a lit­tle while I would not be with you, and that, when you would see me again, I would be on my way to the Fa­ther? I have plainly told you that the Son of Man must die, but that he will rise again. Can you not then dis­cern the mean­ing of my words? You will first be made sor­row­ful, but later on will you re­joice with many who will un­der­stand these things af­ter they have come to pass. A woman is in­deed sor­row­ful in the hour of her tra­vail, but when she is once de­liv­ered of her child, she im­me­di­ately for­gets her an­guish in the joy of the knowl­edge that a man has been born into the world. And so are you about to sor­row over my de­par­ture, but I will soon see you again, and then will your sor­row be turned into re­joic­ing, and there shall come to you a new rev­e­la­tion of the sal­va­tion of God which no man can ever take away from you. And all the worlds will be blessed in this same rev­e­la­tion of life in ef­fect­ing the over­throw of death. Hith­erto have you made all your re­quests in my Fa­ther’s name. Af­ter you see me again, you may also ask in my name, and I will hear you.

84:1.6A fam­ily of some sim­ple sort was in­sured by the fact that the re­pro­duc­tive func­tion en­tails the mother-child re­la­tion­ship. Mother love is in­stinc­tive; it did not orig­i­nate in the mores as did mar­riage. All mam­malian mother love is the in­her­ent en­dow­ment of the ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its of the lo­cal uni­verse and is in strength and de­vo­tion al­ways di­rectly pro­por­tional to the length of the help­less in­fancy of the species.

84:1.7The mother and child re­la­tion is nat­u­ral, strong, and in­stinc­tive, and one which, there­fore, con­strained prim­i­tive women to sub­mit to many strange con­di­tions and to en­dure un­told hard­ships. This com­pelling mother love is the hand­i­cap­ping emo­tion which has al­ways placed woman at such a tremen­dous dis­ad­van­tage in all her strug­gles with man. Even at that, ma­ter­nal in­stinct in the hu­man species is not over­pow­er­ing; it may be thwarted by am­bi­tion, self­ish­ness, and re­li­gious con­vic­tion.

154:6.5It was just an­other of those in­stances in which his earth fam­ily could not com­pre­hend that he must be about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness. And so Mary and his broth­ers were deeply hurt when, not­with­stand­ing that he paused in his speak­ing to re­ceive the mes­sage, in­stead of his rush­ing out to greet them, they heard his mu­si­cal voice speak with in­creased vol­ume: “Say to my mother and my broth­ers that they should have no fear for me. The Fa­ther who sent me into the world will not for­sake me; nei­ther shall any harm come upon my fam­ily. Bid them be of good cour­age and put their trust in the Fa­ther of the king­dom. But, af­ter all, who is my mother and who are my broth­ers?” And stretch­ing forth his hands to­ward all of his dis­ci­ples as­sem­bled in the room, he said: “I have no mother; I have no broth­ers. Be­hold my mother and be­hold my breth­ren! For whoso­ever does the will of my Fa­ther who is in heaven, the same is my mother, my brother, and my sis­ter.”