Maccabees Mama

Sick kids make people squirm. It's just a basic truth. We don't want to think about children in pain or dying or being alone or scared. It goes against nature. Those commercials that show starving children are very effective for a reason. Please, sponsor this child for 2 cents a day and we don't ever have to feel guilty or think about this atrocity again as we sip your $4 coffee.

This mentality is very dangerous and a lie. I'm not messin' around today. Throwing money and/or legislation at a problem does not solve it. Throwing your whole heart into it, through the calling of the Holy Spirit, is the only thing that will ever solve this crisis of children in pain. Recognizing that all souls matter, and we all are responsible is what it takes to save them, and us. Jesus does not ask us to care for these children, he establishes it as a basic foundation of pure faith. Of course monetary support is always needed and appreciated, but if your heart is not involved your money will soon wander into Starbucks. This goes along the same lines as offering to pray for someone because it makes you feel better to offer, instead of following up that offer with a tangible offer to help. Praying for someone is great, but it needs to be followed up with a warm dinner at their doorstep. Every prayer chain needs to be a dinner or help chain as well.

So many families caring for special needs children do not belong to a church community. They are out there, in the trenches, breaking chains of oppression, neglect , abuse, addiction and a host of other evils, without a faith family support. They feel alienated and alone because their children do not fit in with the neatly groomed and quiet churched children around them. Their children drool, yell, have behaviors, medical equipment and might even look a bit odd. They are shushed, stared at, pointed at, and have their parents spending church time in the cry room. These children need to be sitting in the front row. These are the children closest to God. These are the children that we all need to be learning from. They have a lot to teach us, mostly about suffering, joy, and how they can be exactly the same thing at once.

This brings me to Maccabees mama. I think of her often. Late at night I open my Bible and read about her over and over. She doesn't have a name in the passage. She is a Jewish mama with 7 sons. She and her sons were arrested by an evil king because they had refused to abandon their Jewish faith and traditions. As punishment, her sons were tortured horribly and killed right in front of her, all the while these brave sons professed their faith and died saintly deaths. As the soldiers tortured her sons she told them.

"I do not know how your life began in my womb. I was not the one who gave you life and breath and put together each part of your body. It was God who did it, God who created the universe, the human race, and all that exists. He is merciful and he will give you back breath and life again because you love him more than you love yourself".

2 Maccabees 22-23.

As the king became frustrated with this mama, he offered her last son not only to live, but to be rich and favored if only he would give up his faith. The king tried to persuade the mama to convince her son to relent. Finally, she agreed to do so. She leaned into her last living son, and said the most beautiful words...

"My son, have pity on me. Remember, I carried you for nine months in my womb, and nursed you for three years. I have taken care of you and looked after all of your needs up to this present day. So I urge you my child, to look to the sky and earth. Consider everything you see there, and realize that God made it all from nothing, just as He made the human race. Don't be afraid of this butcher. Give up your life willingly and prove yourself worthy of your brothers, so that by God's mercy I may receive you back with them at the resurrection". Maccabees 27-29.

Even at the possibility of saving just one son for herself and her comfort on this earth she spoke words of sacrifice for God. She was thinking of his and her own eternal soul. She knew that even among this immense pain, there would be joy in heaven. She knew what was eternally important.

I think of her as my children suffer. I think of her bravely making it her top priority that her sons get to heaven. I think of her, whose faith was so strong that she raised seven faithful strong sons. I am selfish. I want my children to live beyond me, to be spared pain and suffering. I want pure untainted joy, without the mix of suffering to cloud the water. So I pray for their healing. I pray for their comfort. I pray for their peace. What I have added to my prayers for all of my children is for them to serve God well, and for the salvation of their souls. I pray now too, that Jesus would grace me with the heart of the Maccabees mama. It's a very scary prayer, but a necessary one.