Sweet Mama
When I have a joy or sorrow to share, I am picky about who I talk to. I want someone who has taken this verse deeply to heart:
Rejoice with those who rejoice,
and weep with those who weep.
Romans 12:15
For those important conversations, I’m looking for a heart-to-heart connection. God was sweet to give us that instruction. Rejoicing goes with rejoicing and weeping with weeping. Nothing else will really do in those situations.
This principle applies not only in adult to adult conversations. It goes for adult and child conversations, too. It is sad for a child (of any age) when she doesn’t have a mama who knows how to rejoice with her child and weep with her child — and who puts that knowledge into practice in one of life’s most intimate and important relationships.
The good news is that we can learn how to do this even if it was not modeled for us by our own mamas. God is all about changing hearts, and when the heart changes, the actions follow.
Heart change is something we can pray for. I learned this prayer in public school. We repeated it often.
Let the words of my mouth
and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.
Psalm 19:14
When the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts are acceptable in God’s sight, many parts of our lives are set in order.
All kinds of positive adjectives describe people. People are smart. They are witty. They are fun. They are cool. One of my personal favorites is sweet. In many ways, it is an outgrowth of the gentleness we talked about yesterday. God’s Word has several things to say about sweetness.
Pleasant words are sweet to the soul. They even heal the bones.
Pleasant words are a honeycomb,
 Sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.
Proverbs 16:24Â
In Psalm 55, David, who was called “the sweet psalmist of Israel” (2 Samuel 23:1) missed the sweet fellowship he had enjoyed with former friends.
We who had sweet fellowship together
Walked in the house of God in the throng.
Psalm 55:14
The counsel of a friend is sweet.
Oil and perfume make the heart glad,
So a man’s counsel is sweet to his friend.
Proverbs 27:9
Transformed people with transformed hearts share Christ with their children, their families, their friends, and the world. I was twelve years old in 1966 when Dionne Warwick first sang, “What the world needs now is love sweet love . . . .” It could also use an army of sweet mamas.
But thanks be to God,
who always leads us in triumph in Christ,
and manifests through us
the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him
in every place.
2 Corinthians 2:14