rst of the earth, man's home; and then of
man himself who was to live in the home. Here at once in the beginning is
mother-love. Before the new life comes the mother is absorbed in getting
the home ready; the best and softest and homiest home that her mother-love
can think of, and her fingers fix. The same mother instinct in the birds
spends itself in getting the nest ready, and then patiently broods until
the new occupants come to take possession.

The Bible never calls God a mother, though the mother language, as here,
is used of Him many times. It takes more of the human to tell the divine.
You must take many words, and several of our human relationships, and put
them together, in the finest meaning of each, to get near the full meaning
of what God is. Up on the higher level, with God, the word "father" really
includes all that both father and mother mean to us.

The word "father" is even used once of God in what we think of as the
strict mother sense. In speaking of God's early care of the Hebrews Paul
says, "as a <i>nursing-father</i> bore he them in the wilderness."[1] That word
"nursing-father" is peculiar in coupling the distinctive function of the
mother in caring for the babe with the word father.

The word "father" applied to God includes not only our meaning of father
in all its strength as we know it at its best; but all of the meaning of
the word "mother," in all its sweet fragrance, as we have had it breathed
into our own very life.

We have come commonly to think of the word mother as a tenderer word than
father. Though I have met many, both men and women, who unconsciously
revealed that their experience has made father the tenderer, and the
tenderest word to them. Father stands commonly for the stronger, more
rugged qualities; and mother for the finer, gentler, sweeter, maybe
softer qualities, in the strong meaning of that word soft.

<u>God Giving Himself.</u>

Here in this Genesis story the creation of the whole sun-system to give
life to the earth, and of the earth itself, was the outward beginning of
this greatest passion of love in the heart of God. And if you would know
more of that love in this early stage of it, just look a bit at the home
itself. It has been pretty badly mussed, soiled and hurt by sin's foul
touch. Yet even so it is a wonder of a world in its beauty and
fruitfulness. What must it have been before the slime and tangle of sin
got in! But that's a whole story by itself.