God is our Father-Mother, our children’s Father-Mother, and our grandchildren’s Father-Mother. I always understood that to be true. And yet, I liked the idea of being a mother even before I had children. So I wondered, “If God is the one Father-Mother, then what is my job? Are parents some kind of fill-in for God?”
Of course, as parents know, there is love and work involved in parenting. But how can we be loving and involved parents and yet wholeheartedly and joyfully accept God as the Father-Mother of everyone? This has been a lifelong opportunity and sometimes a struggle for me to understand.
Recently, in prayer I listened to get a clearer sense of God as our Father-Mother, and I found guidance in the Lord’s Prayer, which begins, “Our Father which art in heaven” (Matthew 6:9). Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy gives us this spiritual sense of that line: “Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious” (p. 16).
