By Danny Minton

There’s an old tale from Scotland that tells of how a mother rescued her son from life-threatening danger. Workers were in a quarry preparing to blast the walls to enlarge the mining area. One day, they had set the explosives, connected the fuses, made their way to a safe location, and gave the alarm that they were ready to blast. Then the unthinkable happened. Somehow, a three-year-old boy wandered into the blast area. The workers saw the child and began waving their arms and yelling at him to come to them. The little boy saw them but was only amused by the grown men screaming and flapping their arms. None of them tried to run and get the boy since the blast could go off at any second. It was then that the small boy’s mother arrived searching for her child.

Seeing her child’s situation, her motherly instincts took over. Running to get her child might make him think she was playing and cause him to run around even more in the danger zone. So, the boy’s mother knelt, called his name, and opened her arms wide. When the boy saw her, he immediately ran to her arms. A short time later, the blast shook the ground where they all stood. The little boy, however, was safe in the hug of his mother’s arms.

Every May, a day is set aside to honor mothers. From the time of birth, mothers have more influence over a person’s life than anyone else. When a child is born, their first encounter with love is when they are placed in the loving arms of their mother. When we adopted our two sons, my wife, their new mother, was the first to hold them. Mothers are the ones who patch up the scrapes and bruises that occur in everyday life. They are the ones who sit up at night when a child is sick and hold them when they cry for various reasons. Mothers will always love you no matter what happens in your life. Good or bad, they are there for their child. I remember seeing pictures of the funeral of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who assassinated President Kennedy. Few showed up at the burial, but standing by the casket and weeping was his mother.

Danny Minton with his great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother.

Some mothers make the ultimate sacrifice for their child. Our two sons’ birth mothers both decided that it would be best for their child to give them to families that could care for the needs they couldn’t provide. I also think of Jochebed, who placed her child, Moses, in a basket and set him afloat in the river, hoping the one who found him would care for him. Then there were the two women before Solomon arguing over who was the mother of a baby when the actual mother was willing to give him up to save his life. To a mother, the life and well-being of her child is more important than her own life.

Many of us have mothers who have passed, and it leaves a void that no one else can replace. I often see comments online where people say they would give up anything to have one more hug in their mother’s arms. Too often, while they are with us, we fail to recognize how much our mothers love and care for us. No matter how old we may be, we are still our mother’s little girl or little boy. 

Don’t let the opportunity pass to show or tell your mother how much you love and appreciate her. One of these days, you, too, may be the one who would give anything for one more hug in your mother’s arms.

Danny Minton is a former Elder and minister at Southern Hills Church of Christ