Can you not remember my sister, as if it were yesterday, the hour when your first born child lay in your arms, and how your heart glowed with such love and joy that all you had suffered in bearing it to life was forgotten.

And as it lay there, weak and helpless, its very need called to you all the time, so that you could not forget it for a moment because of the great fountain of loving care that had sprung up in your heart.

He loves you with the same strong tender love that He has given you for your little ones, only far more tender and strong and deep.

Even in the night you would wake at is faintest cry, and put you arms round and care for its needs.  God created in you, my Sister, that wonderful Mother heart, and He loves you with the same strong tender love that He has given you for your little ones, only far more tender and strong and deep.  He says in His Book, “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 not I forget thee” and again He says “As one whom  his mother comforteth so will I comfort you.”  So in all that love that dwells in your heart you can feel as if God stretched out His hands to your and said “That is a little like the way I love thee.”

And when your child gets a little older, your arms are still his refuge, he runs and hides his head in your lap if he is frightened and he sobs there if he is hurt.

“Ye are all the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ,” very little children and very weak, perhaps you have hardly yet learnt to speak to Him or to walk in His ways. But before your little ones knew how to speak or walk they knew how to get comforted in your arms.

So if the new life has come to you by faith in Jesus Christ you have a place of refuge in God as safe and warm and beautiful as you have ready for your child.  Come and hide your head there when you are afraid of what may happen and if you are troubled bring the trouble there as your children come to you, and when Satan tempts you or the world draws you run to your refuge like your children run to you if they see danger near.  And if the night of death comes before Jesus returns He will take you in His Arms and hush your soul to sleep and you will know nothing more till you wake in the new day of heaven.  Amen.

From: Heavenly Light on Daily Life – (a series of unpublished devotionals for Arab women) by Lilias Trotter