Meditation on Acts 9:36-42
Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford
First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown
Mother’s Day
May 11, 2025
I received the best Mother’s Day present this week! My husband bought me a pitchfork. To be clear, it wasn’t specifically a Mother’s Day present. But I am really excited about it. I’ve always wanted a pitchfork. This one is light and easy to handle, but also sharp and powerful. I’ve already used it to turn my compost pile!
I’ve said this before and I will say it, again. I come from a long line of strong women. But I have to say that I didn’t get the gardening gene from my mom. She doesn’t like working in the yard. She doesn’t even like cut flowers.
My mom may not be a gardener, but she is amazing in other ways. A world traveler. Smart! Funny. Chatty. Never shy. Loves people.
She grew up spending half a year on City Island, NY, and half a year in Daytona Beach, FL. She graduated from Mainland High School in Daytona when she was 16 and went off to study nursing at Boston University. She served her country in the Navy as an R.N. at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, now Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Mom met my dad at dinner with friends. He was a little older, a cartographer who had also served in the Navy. He was Jewish, while she had been raised Lutheran. They fell in love and got married by a Justice of the Peace. They had three kids in four years (I’m the youngest), and one day, Dad showed my mom where he wanted to live—a house way out on the country so he could garden. So, even though she was a city girl, they moved to the country. Mom managed to fit into small town life and make plenty of friends, though she was one of only a few women who were college graduates in the town. She played bridge—still plays bridge several days a week—and still keeps up with her old friends, many of them former bridge partners.
As I grew up, she continued to work as a nurse. She worked 3 to 11 shifts at the ER at Montgomery General Hospital, now Medstar Montgomery Medical Center in Olney, MD. Dad would feed us hot dogs, tuna fish, or TV dinners and put us to bed while she was still working. She later became a school health nurse. She drove to more than one school to serve students every day, many of them needy. She would change careers when I was in junior high, becoming a real estate agent. She discovered she really liked it and was great at it. Why am I remembering when mom had a mobile phone in the 1970s? It was kept in a big bag in her car.
But mom wasn’t just about her job, though work has always been important to her. She continues to work in her retirement in her 80s, preparing taxes for her neighbors. Mom has always been close to her extended family, visiting and writing cards and letters. She has always loved to cook and was an excellent baker. She can make a pie crust! She and her friend, Eleanor, also a nurse, used to can and freeze all sorts of vegetables and fruits so that we could eat local produce year round.
Mom loved football, too. Still does. My dad didn’t follow sports. She bought a little red, black and white TV of her own in the 1970s, when most households only had one TV, so that she wouldn’t miss a single game of the Washington Redskins. I can still hear her yelling, “Get him! Get him!”’
Mom has sung in church choirs for years. She didn’t have time when she was busy raising three kids and working as a real estate agent. But after she and dad retired and moved back to her native Florida in the early 1990s, she began to sing in church, again. She also learned to paint. The walls of her home are full of her watercolor art, which has been displayed in the community center where she lives and featured in local publications.
Before learning to paint, mom could knit Afghans and sew like anything. I still hear the hum of her sewing machine that she operated with her knee and her hands. She made my sister and me clothes when jumpers and tights were all the thing. I remember getting compliments on a green jumper that I wore to a junior high dance. Mom had made it!
Since my father died, my mom continues to care for people. She volunteers at the nursing home where my dad spent his last months, struggling with Parkinson’s. She brings the residents in wheelchairs to the church service on Sunday mornings.
The strong women in my family have many of the character traits of Tabitha in our reading in Acts today. Tabitha, an Aramaic word that means “Gazelle,” was called Dorcas among the Greek speakers. One translation says, “She spent all her time in the performance of good works and acts of kindness.” After she falls ill and dies, is washed and laid in an upper room, and disciples send for Peter in the nearby town of Lydda, we learn more about her amazing gifts that she shared with her community. Peter is greeted, when he arrives, by all the widows, tearfully showing him the dresses and coats that Dorcas has made.
And Peter, commissioned by the Risen Christ to tend his lambs and feed his sheep, has just healed a man called Aeneas, who had been paralyzed and confined to bed for 8 years. The residents of Lydda and the Plain of Sharon see him healed and “turn to the Lord.”
This time, Peter will raise Tabitha/Dorcas to new life. This scene looks remarkably like when Jesus raises Jairus’ daughter from her deathbed in Mark 5:41. “He says a short sentence in Aramaic, differing only in one letter from Jesus’ words to Jairus’s daughter. Whereas Jesus had said Talitha qum(i)… Peter now says Tabitha qum(i) or “Tabitha, get up.”[1]
She opens her eyes and, seeing Peter, sits up. He helps her to stand and calls in all the widows to present her ALIVE, again. Many come to believe on the Lord because of her healing.
Dear friends, God cares about the bodies of women and the gifts of women. We need only look around this room and share the stories of our flock to know how blessed we are because of the gifts of women. Our cup of blessing runneth over!
My mom and I didn’t always see eye to eye in my teens and twenties. Did I tell you that I come from a long line of women with strong personalities? By the time I was in my 30s, my eyes were opened to her humanity and strengths, more and more, and to my own humanity and weaknesses. God has a way of humbling us, reminding us of the grace that we all have been given and the new mercies that we receive from the Lord every morning. God has a way of helping us, as we age, see our parents and siblings and other relatives as people, with their own struggles and difficulties. And we love them even more.
Dear friends, how could we who are loved unconditionally, we who are the redeemed, withhold love or forgiveness from a family member?
Mom was there when I needed her, so many times. And I am so thankful that my mom is still with us. I know today, especially, many of you are missing your moms, who have already gone home to be with the Lord. Remember that your loved ones are still with us in the Great Cloud of Witnesses. They are here today. They are still cheering you on as you run the race of faith.
In a few moments, we will celebrate our Communion with Christ and one another. As we partake of the bread and cup, remember that we are celebrating with the Great Cloud of Witnesses, all the faithful who have gone before us, who have already finished their race and are with Christ, face to face. May the Lord open our eyes to their everlasting, loving presence with us.
And Mom, if you are listening to this message today on the livestream, I want to say thank you for being my amazing mom! I am so proud of you! I love you!
Let us pray.
Holy One, thank you for your love for us and your concern for the bodies of women and girls. Your plan for salvation includes using the gifts of all women and girls for ministry—for loving and caring for others in more ways than we can say. Today on Mother’s Day and every day we thank you for our mothers, Lord, who have loved and nurtured us into being the people we are today. We ask that you bless women everywhere, Lord. Let them feel your loving care of their bodies, minds, and souls. Heal the sick and comfort those who are grieving their loved ones. And dear Lord, we lift up families with broken relationships. We pray that you would bring about peace, reconciliation, and healing, just as you gave Peter power to raise Tabitha from the dead. In the name of our Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—we pray. Amen.
[1] F. F. Bruce, The Book of the Acts (Revised), The New International Commentary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 199.
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