Matthew 20:21-22

A MOTHER’S PRAYER

‘Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on Thy right hand, and the other on the left, in Thy kingdom. But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’

Matthew 20:21

This mother of the two sons who had such high expectations for her boys was the type of many a mother before and since,

I. The purpose of life is character.—The purpose of life is not what the world calls happiness, but character. The real purpose, then, of the training of the boys on whom we think to-day is far higher than appears at first sight. To be successful barristers, brave soldiers, useful administrators is one thing: to be characters fitted to live for ever with God and the holy angels is not contradictory to the first, but is quite another.

II. Christ the pattern.—Having once grasped the first truth, it is not very difficult to grasp the second. Christ was the Pattern for all ages of the training of a perfect son for a deathless future. He learned obedience, we are told, by the things that He suffered. He was perfected through suffering. ‘For their sakes I sanctify myself,’ He said Himself, ‘that they also might be sanctified through the truth’; and here is the second great truth of life. In not a single instance is a son to-day asked to drink any cup which the Perfect Son did not drink first Himself.

III. Heaven-sent discipline.—There must be, then, some connection between drinking of cups and sitting on the right hand of God, and good reason for our belief that the mother’s prayer was not disregarded but answered, as so often happens, in a different way; and the connection is this: If heaven is formed by character, character is formed by discipline, and the drinking of the cups is heaven-sent discipline which perfects the character. O mother at thy prayers, O father whose heart is set upon the future of your boy, look not thou down but up! Leave him in the Lord’s hand to mould him.

And what is the spirit of that prayer as applied to our own time? Surely it is, that our boys may have grace given to them that they may day by day live near to Jesus Christ. The storms of temptation may break upon them, but if they are living in the realised Presence of Jesus all will be well with them—well with them here and well with them hereafter.

Bishop A. F. Winnington-Ingram.

Illustration

‘None of the mothers of to-day need fear to pray the Lord to let their boys be as near Him as they can, and as high up in the Kingdom of Grace, and afterwards of Glory, as it is possible for them to be. He gives the mother’s love, He hears the mother’s prayers, and knows that nine-tenths of the goodness among men in the world to-day is due to the faith, and prayer, and influence of their mothers who have made them what they are.