Precious Words....Dear Mom: I love and appreciate....you!

Reading is a wonderful way to explore 'other' worlds without leaving the comforts of home.
Books have always been fascinating to me and the magic of the written word holds a delight that is incomparable to all known riches.
Words....profound words....are priceless and therefore.......timeless!
For example, I read all kinds of books. From great works of literature to modern novels, some written by my very own relatives like Ray and Dockie, to modern day devotionals or old scripts written by Puritan Christians.
I am now re-reading one called 'Captured By Mystery' By: Alvin N. Rogness from the 1970's.
It is a signed edition that I treasure.
The author is a past president of Luther Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minn. and participated in the Protestant Religion Missions sponsored by the U.S. Air Force in Europe many years ago and also conducted chaplains retreats in Japan.
When his Book of Comfort was first published in 1979, it won the Book-of-the-Year Award from the Academy of Parish Clergy.
Dr. Rogness was in great demand as a speaker because of his 'persuasive logic and directness' and he presented deep insight into the source of strength found when the right relationship exists between God and man...
One of his devotionals which I read in the early morning hours today seems archaic in our computer world but struck me anew with its timeless nature of truth.
I write it here in its entirety .......
EVERY WOMAN A MOTHER by: Alvin Rogness

"Even if she has no children of her own, every normal woman is a mother.
For motherhood is more than a biological event.
The role is woven into the very fabric of the race.
It is a position to be won by the exercise of those tender and fierce virtues that preserve the race of men.
Many a woman has walked out of a hospital with a baby in her arms and has never become a true mother.
And many others - teachers, nurses, office workers - with no child to call their own, have won the laurels of great motherhood over and over through the tenderness and wisdom they have poured into the lives of children along their way.
It is not the office that makes a person great...even the office of mother.
A president is not great because he is president, a minister is not holy because he presides over a service. A man elected may find the presidency an occasion for drawing out his possibilities for greatness and a minister may take sober stock of his responsibilities and open his heart to God's teaching and grace for sacredness. And a woman, as a mother, may yield to the disciplines and sacrifices of life daily that will make her a noble mother.
Fortunately, this role often does just that.
Most of us, therefore, have the joy of thanking God for a greatness that was or is our mother!
But let us not forget that such greatness did not come by itself.
It was God's gift to a woman who, as a mother, received God's grace, strength, wisdom and love to achieve great motherhood!
Neither a king nor a general nor an archbishop is cast in such a high role!
Civilizations rest less on parliaments than on mother.
A man is like his mother, not necessarily by the heritage of birth, but by the subtle and stalwart qualities which in the formative years he absorbed in the presence
of .......great motherhood."