While visiting our daughter, who recently married a Canadian and had set up their new home in Canada, I found myself drawn to a cross-stitch picture hanging on the fireplace wall of their lounge. It was a gift from my wife to our daughter and took a mutual friend many hours of painstaking work to complete. The picture is entitled ‘Through a mother’s eyes’ and depicts the scene of a bride making ready for her wedding standing before a full-length mirror. Mother has made the final adjustments ensuring that her daughter is looking radiant on the most important day of her life, her hair with its pink ribbon, the basket of pink flowers and the brilliant white dress and veil. However, as mother gazes intently at the mirror she sees a little girl with curls in her hair in a blue dress clutching her dolly for she is looking down memory lane and remembering her daughter as she was and as she always will be, her darling daughter. Not being one of life’s romantics it took me some time to appreciate what was on the artist’s mind, yet the eyes of every mother who looked at the picture became immediately moist for they understood the message. Therefore, how fitting is the title.

As I considered the title again I began to think of another graphic picture of a mother and her Son. This time it is not the joyful marriage scene but the sad sorrowful scene of death. The sun is at its zenith as it scorches the rocky hill just outside the city wall. Upon the hill are three crosses. Upon each cross someone is being crucified because the law has been broken. Above each of their heads a simple plaque identifies them and the crimes they have committed. The plaque on the centre cross simply states ‘Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews’. A woman is standing nearby gazing intently upon her eldest son for the disciple John writes, ‘Now there stood by the cross of Jesus Mary his mother’. Well may we describe this scene ‘Through a mother’s eyes’. She looks at the crown of thorns upon His head, His face battered to pulp, His hands and feet have been spiked to the cross. His back has been stripped of flesh because of the severity of the whipping He received and her eyes brim with tears as the sun beats mercilessly upon His naked form. She too looks down memory lane and she remembers the promise given to her by an angel about Him, ‘He shall be called the Son of the Highest’. She recalls the first time she took Him into her arms; oh how she would love to do that now. She thinks of His childhood when He never caused her a moment of concern except when she couldn’t find Him among the relatives and for this He chided her, and then into manhood which He spent helping others. He cared for everyone and always was able to help them no matter their trouble. She could not think of one reason why He should be crucified or why the men that had done this to Him hated Him so much. Although heart-broken, she continued to stand silently proclaiming to the world, ‘You might hate Him but I love Him’. I challenge every dear saint to take their stand alongside this dear woman and look again at the picture of Calvary and see it, ‘Through a mother’s eyes’.


Top of next column