This Day With God

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. TDG 230.1

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.... TDG 230.2

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. TDG 230.3

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. TDG 230.4

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. TDG 230.5