Heavenly Minded Mom: Embrace What Matters Most
Wearisome, empty striving too often consumes our lives as mothers. Instead, let’s become a heavenly minded mom who is ready to embrace what matters most.
Baking cookies with kids is a messy undertaking, and, if I’m honest, it’s not one that I particularly enjoy.
As my little ones help me, we measure, dump, mix, and scoop. I see the beauty in this time together, and yet inside I recoil as they spill ingredients, spread the mess onto the floor with their elbows, and crowd around each other and me pleading for turns.
Embrace What Matters Most
In the end, we’re left with floured floors, sticky dough countertops, and a mountain of dirty mixing bowls, spatulas, beaters, baking sheets.
Today’s cookies are for my kids’ homeschool group party.
Later, as I scrub out mixing bowls, wipe and re-wipe the counter, sweep, and generally work for a long time to reign in our mess, I reflect on these tasks. I wonder what motivates me. I also wonder what I would want my motivation to be for all my efforts.
The answer to the latter question—and I hope the former as well—is love.
- I want to love my children’s peers by providing something good for them to enjoy.
- I want to love my children well by taking on the added stress of teaching them how to bake, and in the meantime, spending quality time together.
- I want to love my Savior well by doing the tasks He has put before me (i.e. bringing a sweet snack to the party and training up children) wholeheartedly and unto Him.
So, I scrub the stuck-on batter a bit harder.
The truth is, these cookies will be eaten and gone by tomorrow. This kitchen will be dirtied all over again in just a few hours when I make dinner. My work will be frustrating and come undone. This reality is part of the curse we endure because of our sin (Rom 8:18-25).
But yet God, in His mercy, has ushered us into new, eternal life through Jesus Christ. He has supernaturally poured meaning back into even the smallest moments of our days. Everything we put our hand to when done in an overflow of God’s love in us will ring into eternity. This eternity-soaked love flows directly from heaven itself. It is a channeling of God’s holy, sacrificial love for us.
At the end of time, prophecy will cease, tongues will be stilled, and knowledge will pass away. Those cookies will not be enjoyed after we die, but the love we exhibited through them will remain.
There is nothing greater that God wants from us than to love Him, firstly, and secondly, to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matt 22:36-40):
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).
Do you want to make your cookie baking (and all your moments) ring into eternity? Do them in love.
Life is too short and God is too good to do it any other way.
Wearisome, empty striving too often consumes our lives as mothers. We work to keep up appearances, meet worldly standards, and find satisfaction in the offerings of this life. However, God has set eternity in a mother’s heart, and deep inside, we long for more.
Katie Bennett is a blogger, podcaster, and author at Embracing a Simpler Life. Her devotional (affiliate link to book) Heavenly Minded Mom: 90 Days to Embrace what Matters Most, calls mothers into a new way of seeing life –in light of eternity.
This uplifting book offers moms the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, wrapped in the hope of the Gospel in bite-sized portions. Let’s reevaluate how we envision our lives and claim a heavenly mindset towards our mothering tasks. Discover a new way of looking at our responsibilities as a mom through God’s eyes.
When firmly grasped, the hope of heaven changes everything. THIS is our one opportunity to live well, right here, right now, and right in our actual life. Let’s not miss it!
Get Katie’s free scripture writing plan here: 30 Days to a Heart Set on Heaven.
