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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Devotional Bible Geared To Moms ‘In The Trenches’

David Briggs Associated Press

On this Mother’s Day, preachers across the nation will turn to the 31st chapter of Proverbs and speak glowingly of the perfect woman described there: one who rises while it is still night and cares for the poor and her family late into the night.

And most of the mothers in the pews, those whom many clergy will idealize that day, will want to run for the back door, screaming, “I can’t do that!”

So says Elisa Morgan, president of MOPS International, a Christian organization that supports mothers of young children.

Despite an increasingly crowded market of specialty Bibles, Morgan has helped adapt one for mothers. She wrote the reflections for the new “Mom’s Devotional Bible,” published by Zondervan Publishing, in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Heart icons are integrated throughout the Bible, marking every Scripture passage that relates to mothers, as well as devotions targeting mothering topics, from fatigue to monsters in the closet.

Motherhood, along with adolescence and old age, is one of those special periods of life when people confront issues of faith, Morgan said. Becoming a mother forces a woman to think about the spiritual values she wants to pass on to her family and to re-examine her own faith.

In “Mom’s Devotional Bible,” Morgan, mother of two, tries to relate Scripture to the real world of contemporary mothers.

This is a Bible for the mother who sometimes yells at her children, argues with her husband, gets jealous of neighbors and holds grudges.

“Moms live in the trenches,” Morgan said. “My goal is to speak hope in the trenches, joy in the trenches.” Instead of measuring up to the woman in Proverbs 31, Morgan said, mothers might find more nurture in passages such as Isaiah 40:11, where God is shown as one who pays special attention to moms:

“He tends his flock like a shepherd:

“He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart;

“He gently leads those who have young.”

In reflecting upon the passage, Morgan encourages mothers to lay their heads close to God’s heart.

“When it’s 10 at night and we’ve been up since 5 in the morning, and we still have three more loads of wash to do and bills to pay, we need a God who gathers us in his arms and offers comfort,” she wrote.