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Mother’s Day is a celebration honoring mothers and motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society.

Ann Jarvis founded Mother’s Day Work Clubs in five cities to improve sanitary and health conditions. During the Civil War the women belonging to the clubs made it their business to treat the wounds, feed, and clothe both Union and Confederate soldiers with neutrality.

The modern holiday of Mother’s Day was first celebrated in 1908 when, two years after her mother’s death, Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother in Grafton, West Virginia. She then began a successful campaign to make “Mother’s Day” a recognized holiday in the United States. But by 1920 she was disappointed that the festival had become commercialized so she, with her sister Ellsinore, spent their family inheritance campaigning against what the day had become. Both died in poverty. According to her New York Times obituary, Anna became embittered because too many people sent their mothers a printed greeting card. As she said, “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment!”

This gives us food for thought! How do you honor your mother?

Other countries adopted the festival, which is now celebrated worldwide, predominately on the second Sunday in May.

The wise man, Solomon, considered that a virtuous woman’s worth is far above the value of rubies. God has given wives and mothers the special privilege and honor to be the queen of their home.

“After they have done the best they can do for the good of their children, they may bring them to Jesus. Even the babes in the mother’s arms are precious in His sight. And as the mother’s heart yearns for the help she knows she cannot give, the grace she cannot bestow, and she casts herself and children into the merciful arms of Christ, He will receive and bless them; He will give peace, hope, and happiness to mother and children. This is a precious privilege which Jesus has granted to all mothers.” The Adventist Home, 274.

We remember a true mother in Israel, one who left a legacy of faithfulness to all who had the privilege of knowing her during her long and blessed life. This tribute can also be applied to faithful mothers everywhere.

A Tribute to Ruth Grosboll

You reached the age of ninety-three
A champion on the road of life.
You chose the straight and narrow way,
Through good times, and through strife.
But you hadn’t any inkling
Of the task you’d undertake,
When you’d venture out on life’s highway,
And the single life forsake.
It wasn’t very long before
A mother you became—
T’was then you knew that life for you
Would never be the same!
Your hands were young and tender then,
As you cared for family.
They baked the bread; they kept the home—
They did it lovingly.
They wiped the runny noses;
They soothed the bumps and scrapes;
They healed the many little hurts,
And baked the pies and cakes!
They mended many rips and tears;
Washed heaps of soiled clothes;
They sewed on countless buttons;
How many—no one knows!
They prepared so many, many meals;
Packed many lunches, too.
Each sandwich was filled with slices of love,
And wrapped in a blessing; it’s true!
You rose up early and stayed up late,
To care for your little flock.
You gave them a good foundation—
You built upon the Rock.
Yet, many a night you were awake,
With folded hands in prayer.
You wiped the feverish little brow—
To sleep, you didn’t dare.
Your hands gave love and comfort.
They were gentle in their quest
To help a friend, and share God’s love—
You always gave your best.
The years they came; the years they went;
Your hands grew wrinkled and old.
They were silent little witnesses
Of stories yet untold.
You strove to serve the Master.
Your dedication, we recall.
We hear your voice in our memories—
You stand so proud and tall!
You reached fourscore and ten—and more,
And the world is a better place.
You cared enough to touch the lives
Of many—by God’s grace.
We have courage for the future,
’Cause you’ve gone this way before.
We promise we’ll not fail you—
We’ll give our best and more!
To reach the coveted milestone
Is a blessing you received.
To live throughout eternity
Is the goal we must achieve.
Your children loved and adored you.
To this they will attest.
If they could tell you—I know they’d say,
“My Mom—She Was the Best!”

– Jo Phelps –

I often marvel,” said a middle-aged man, “at the way my mother used to work out the kinks and knots in our young lives. She had such a faculty of lowering the pitch of our indignations and of placing before us in the true light all sides of our troubles. Instead of fanning the flames of our unjust and unbalanced estimates of the wrongs we thought we had suffered, she calmly judged the case and showed us where we were at fault. She showed us the unwise results of jumping at conclusions, and the wrong we did ourselves and others by forming unjust judgments of them. And I cannot remember that I ever heard her speak an unkind, uncharitable word of anyone. What a pity that we cannot see these wonderful characteristics in our young days, and that they are not revealed to us until so many of our mothers have passed away, and we cannot tell them how they influenced our lives for good?”

When my friend left me I found myself thinking of the wonderful influence of mothers. To the child what mother says and does is always right. Mother’s estimate of people and things is conclusive. What opinions she has must be right, for is not mother the wisest and best person in the whole world?

If the boy has a quarrel and comes home to tell her that his mate is the meanest boy in the world, that he has injured him and he hates him and will not speak to him again —“never as long as he lives”—the unwise mother will take her boy’s part; she will depreciate his mate in his hearing, and leave the impression on her son’s mind that he is perfectly justifiable in his denunciation of his former friend.

But the wise mother will listen calmly to her boy’s statement of the wrongs he thinks he has suffered, and then she will ask him what he did himself to bring about such a state of unpleasantness. She will not magnify the wrong, but make it as light as possible, and convince her boy that he was somewhat to blame himself, and that it “always takes two to make a quarrel, but one can always end it”—showing that a forgiving, forgetting spirit is the right one to be fostered, and that it is no sign of weakness, but strength, to go more than half way in the making up of quarrels and being good friends again.

Children often come in and tell some stories detrimental to their neighbors, which they have heard unwisely told over in some of their young companions’ homes. Oh, how much trouble and unjust prejudices have come from gossip of this kind spoken before children, who have not the discretion to keep it to themselves!

The wise mother never encourages such gossip. She deprecates it, and teaches her children that charity which makes the child and the man and the woman so Christlike all through life. If we mothers could only, as Madam Swetchine says, “employ heavenly forces to keep our balance amid earthly ones”!

Let us try to keep out of our own and our children’s hearts all bitterness and irritation and the words that have stings in them and hurt so cruelly. Let us be careful not to talk too much of the burdens of life, and estimate their weight in high figures—rather by patient bearing to show the strength that comes from the help given by the mother’s God, in whom she trusts and on whose arm she leans.

The true mother has no time or strength to give to the vanities of life. “Blessed is the memory of a good mother. It floats to us now like the beautiful perfume of some woodland blossom. The music of other voices may be lost, but the entrancing memory of hers will echo in our souls forever. Other faces will fade away and be forgotten, but hers will shine on until the light from heaven’s portals shall glorify our own. When in the fitful pauses of our busy life our feet wander back to the old homestead, and, crossing the well-worn threshold, we stand once more in the low, quaint room so hallowed by her presence, how the feeling of childish innocence and dependence comes over us as we kneel down in the evening hour just where we long years ago knelt at mother’s knee, lisping ‘Our Father’! How many times when the tempter lures us on, the memory of those sacred hours, that mother’s words, her faith and prayers, saved us from plunging into the abyss of sin! Years have piled great drifts between her and us, but they have not hidden from our sight the glory of her pure, unselfish love.” —Christian Work.

The Signs of the Times, November 12, 1894.