MOMs are sweet, chocolate treat!

Moms are sweet!  God made mommies to love, protect, teach, and care for His children.  Mommies get to tell their babies about Jesus, not just by bringing them to church, singing hymns, and sharing God's Word, but by modeling unmerited forgiveness and compassion.  As God's children we too are given life, and garner unmerited mercy, love, and forgiveness through Christ Jesus, our Savior.

For Mother's Day, our Itty Bitties, and their mommies and daddies, reflected on the blessing of mothers, motherhood, and our babes.  We learn so much about God through these vocations, even as we are mere fallen shadows of His perfect love.

I'm thankful for all of the daddies who regularly attend our Itty Bitty Sunday School classes, and this week we put the dads to work!  Daddies cut as out little ones folded and glued to make a special gift for our sweet mommies! 

You'll need:

Small baking cups

Scissors

Glue Stick

Tape

Green Paper

Marker

Plain M&M's

Count four baking cups and them fold in half.  Daddies, cut fringe all along the fluted part of the cup, down to the base.

 Layer the cups in quarter turns, gluing them together as you build the flower.

 The four cups together form a circle.

Cut a leaf out of green paper.  The leaf makes a nice place for a love note or gift tag.

 

Print and cut out an O for the center of the flower, and glue it in place.  I used a neat set of over sized typewriter stamps to make the Os, and I love how it mimics the type on the M&M's packaging.

Cut a ruffle around the circumference of the flower and tousle to fluff.  Tape the flower over the &; place it nice and low to reveal as much of the M's as possible. Strategically place the leaf to cover the little M&M's guy.

Now the candy is properly labeled: MOM's!
While little hands were busy, we discussed a charming passage from Luther's The Estate of Marriage.

"Now observe that when that clever harlot, our natural reason (which the pagans followed in trying to be most clever), takes a look at married life, she turns up her nose and says, “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores…?

What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful, and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, O God, because I am certain that thou hast created me as a man and hast from my body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers, or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labor, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight… A wife too should regard her duties in the same light, as she suckles the child, rocks and bathes it, and care for it in other ways...These are truly golden and noble works."

Doesn't Luther have the best vocabulary!? 

Enjoy the stench of those diapers! God, with all his angels and creatures, is smiling - not because that father is washing diapers, as he should be on Mother's Day, but because he is doing so in Christian faith.

Amen!