The Maternal Father

Photo by Rachel Perrella Photography, 2025

I wrote this as a Mother’s Day call to worship months ago, but forgot about it until this afternoon! So today, you are my Living Vine church buds, and before we begin worshipping God together, let’s take a minute to contemplate a specific, tender characteristic of God.

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God is never explicitly labeled our Mother in the Bible; He consistently makes Himself known to us as our Father in both Testaments. I certainly have no interest in imposing anything onto the Word that isn’t there. Yet as I read, I’m compelled to ask: if both men and women are made in God’s image, and both contribute to the world in unique, intentional ways, how might something of God’s character be reflected in His design of women?

For school, I had to write a paper on Exodus 34, and I honed in on Yahweh’s first self-description to His people. He says, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…” Though I could giddily recite my whole paper to you, on this Mother’s Day, I’d love to tell you about the Hebrew word for compassion: rahamim. That word is very closely tied to rachem, the Hebrew word for “womb.” Isn’t that interesting?

For the men in the room, you’re not excluded from this. Rahamim also refers to—a word you don’t hear often at church—the bowels. Now, I promise you, I’m not saying, “you men know a little something about bowels, don’t you?”

I would never make a poop joke in the house of the Lord. I am way too mature for that. 

But I bring up both words because rahamim is rooted in the core of us—it was considered “the seat of warm and tender feelings.”* It’s also the place from which those feelings move us to action, like the phrase “gut reaction.” In compassion, we are driven not simply to grieve suffering, but to enter it—to do everything in our power to alleviate it. This Hebrew word is often linked to the protective, loving bond between a mother and her infant. So perhaps there is a maternal aspect to the Father’s love for His children.

I promise you, I am not making a gendered or role-related statement; if anything, I am noting the ways our Lord transcends the limitations of humanity.

As Stephen A. Bly writes, “[Our] mistake comes when we begin to think we can limit God to human categories. We are mistaken, for instance, if we learn what love is like from our relationship to our mate, and then project its ultimate expression to God. Instead, we should learn what love is like by getting to know God and then apply that trait to ourselves and others…. God is not a glorified, sinless, exalted man. His character is uniquely His own and will not be contained in human categories.”**

If we believe that everything beautiful, good, and holy finds its fullest embodiment in Yahweh, then let’s take a moment to consider his metaphors in the following verses with an open heart:

“I have long been silent; yes, I have restrained myself. But now, like a woman in labor, I will cry and groan and pant.” (Isa. 42:14 NLT)

“Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open; like a lion I will devour them.” (Hosea 13:8 NIV)

“For the Lord says this, “Behold, I extend peace to her (Jerusalem) like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you will be nursed, you will be carried on her hip and [playfully] rocked on her knees. As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; And you will be comforted in Jerusalem.” (Isa. 66:13 AMP)

See Jesus’s metaphor here:

“Jerusalem! Jerusalem! You kill the prophets and throw stones in order to kill those who are sent to you. Many times, I have wanted to gather your people together. I have wanted to be like a hen who gathers her chicks under her wings. And you would not let me!” (Matt. 23:37; Luke 13:34 NIrV)

But my favorite passage comes in Isaiah 49. When God’s people wonder if He has abandoned them in their pain, Yahweh replies, “Never! Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no rahamim for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you! See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.” We are inscribed onto the hands of our God, just as a mother’s body is inscribed with the sacrifice of pregnancy. My skin, my hips, my abdomen—they’re forever changed. I am reminded every day through the pain and clicking in my body that I carried children here. My frame is their hometown. And their existence forever alters the way I exist in the world. But let’s just say my outer body bore no scars of pregnancy…

Did you know that a child’s DNA stays within a mother’s body—often, for life? The cells of the fetus enter the mother’s bloodstream and move to the heart, the brain, the liver, the skin. Permanently. Irretrievably. 

Now, this is a difficult pivot, but I have to acknowledge on Mother’s Day: not every mom is full of compassion. Not every woman who longs to carry a child gets to do so. I am not ignorant of these realities on this side of heaven, and I grieve them with you. Lament is wholly welcome today; you are free to invite the God of rahamim into the grief-soaked, lonely places of your story. I promise you, He already feels sorrow… which means that choosing to mourn in this moment can actually be a beautiful and honest act of worship.

I invite you—the ones who mother, the ones who do not, the ones who mothered well, the ones who could not, the ones still waiting, and the ones still grieving—to consider these pictures in the context of God’s love for you: His perfect, complete, never-changing love. You are engraved on His heart! Permanently and irretrievably! He cares for you not because of anything you do—we are but helpless infants!—but because your DNA flows through His proverbial veins. He went so far as to enter your suffering, through Jesus, because of His rahamim. He sacrificed His body so you might have life—so that you might be reborn in Him and through Him. 

What a gift it is to be held by the God of rahamim. What a gift it is to know that nothing can separate us from His perfect, compassionate love.

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*G. W. Bromiley, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1988), 189.

**Stephen A. Bly, The Surprising Side of Grace: Appreciating God’s Loving Anger (Grand Rapids, MI: Discover House, 1994), 26.