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Mother Love, August 9
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have
compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not
forget thee.
Isaiah 49:15
.
I am grateful to our kind, heavenly Father that you [Edson White] are
enjoying the blessing of good health. Make the most of this precious boon
and do not become careless and transgress the laws of health. Live in so
simple a manner that health may be retained....
Go forward, my son, and if you make God your trust, your strength and
counselor, you will be triumphant at last. Walk with lowliness of mind,
esteeming others better than yourself, and may God give you wisdom that you
may conduct yourself with so much prudence that you can be an instrument
in His hands of doing great good in His cause in forwarding the important
work for these last days. Do not think your mother is critical and severe. She
feels the most intense interest for you that you should make a success of this
life and gain the future, immortal life.
God loves you. He inquires, “Can a woman forget her sucking child?”
(
Isaiah 49:15
). You have probably heard of the sad story of the mother
who, with her husband and child, attempted to cross the Green Mountains in
midwinter. Their progress was arrested by night and a storm. The husband
went for help and lost his way in the darkness and the drifted snow, and was
long in returning. The mother felt the chill of death coming upon her, and
she bared her bosom to the freezing blast and the falling snow, that she might
give all that remained of her own life to save that of her child. When the
morning came, the living babe was found wrapped in the mother’s shawl,
vainly striving with smiles and with a babe’s pretty art to arrest the attention
of the mother’s fixed and frozen eye, and wondering why she did not awaken
from her sleep.
Here is seen love stronger than death, that binds the mother’s heart to her
child. And yet God says that the mother will sooner forget her child than that
He will forget a soul that trusts in Him. That the Lord loves us is enough to
call forth deepest gratitude, every hour of our lives. God’s love is speaking to
you. Give attention or you will not apply His words to yourself. Only trust
the love of Jesus, and you will realize the deepest joy.—
Letter 12, August 9,
1873
, to Edson and Emma White.
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