About 6:00 am on a Wednesday morning James Lawson of Running Springs, California left home to apply for a job. About an hour later his thirty-six-year-old wife, Patsy left for her fifth-grade teaching job down the mountain in Riverside.-- accompanied by her two children, five-year-old Susan and two-year-old Herado to be dropped off at the baby-sitterer's. Unfortunately, they never got that far. Eight and half hours later the man found his wife and daughter dead in their wrecked car, upside down in a cold mountain stream. His two-year-old son was just barely alive in the forty-eight-degree water. but in that death, the character of a mother was revealed in a most dramatic and heart-rending way. For when the father scrambled down the cliff to what he was sure were the cries of his dying wife, he found her locked in death holding her little boy's head just above the water in the submerged car. For eight and a half hours, Patsy Lawson had held her beloved toddler afloat and had finally died, her body almost frozen in death in that position of self-giving love, holding her baby up to breathe. She died so that another might live. That's the essence of a mother's love, (Illustrations Unlimited, ed. James S. HewittTyndale Publishers, Wheaton, Ill. 1988, pg 376).

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We celebrate the essence of a mother's love on Mother's Day. There are many various types of mothers who give of themselves so others might live.  A mother's love reminds us of how much Jesus loves us and the world and gave of himself on the cross so we might have eternal life.

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Let us give thanks to those mothers who have gone on to be with the Lord and for those mothers still with us, May we give thanks to God for a mother's love and for the love of Christ. 

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Grace and peace,

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Rev. Herb Williams

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