Helen, the wife of Sparta’s King Menelaus, was acclaimed the most beautiful woman of Greece. The Greeks fought the Trojan War to get her back from Troy, where Paris, the son of King Priam, had taken her. In Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, the question is asked concerning Helen, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burned the topless towers of Ilium?"

In May, we honor women with another kind of beauty - the beauty of devotion to maternal duties. We ask, concerning our mother: Is this the face that smiled on us, guided us, and launched us for life’s voyage? Are these the hands that served us in a thousand ways and taught us to fold our own hands in prayer? Are these the feet that moved swift and beautiful under the impulse of love? Are these the lips that spoke to us about our Savior’s dying love to make us His own? Indeed they are! A mother’s sincere devotion far exceeds Helen’s beauty because it is the inner beauty of love. Mothers can either be instrumental in the spiritual growth of their children or a hindrance to that growth. They can feed them spiritually through the church and teaching God’s Word or prevent that by leaving it up to the child to feed themselves someday if they choose.

A Godly mother uses the means of grace, only the Bible, to bring her children to Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit they believe This is the only way a person can be saved - faith in the Savior Jesus, our God, by the grace of God. What a wonderful tribute the book of Proverbs gives to the godly mother: Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: ‘Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.’ Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate (31:28-31).

Having given our mothers such praise, all that remains is that we who are children, young or old, support our words with loving deeds, as our Lord would have it. May God richly bless all faithful Godly mothers.