With Mother’s Day just around the bend, I have been thinking about my mother, Mildred Sanders. Before the term missional was even a word, she was living a missional life and being an example for me.

We lived in a farming community of around 250 people about 60 miles north of Abilene, Texas. To give you a picture of the time frame, I graduated from High School there in 1968. Here are a few of the things Mom modeled for me in my teenage years.

Serve Others

If you drove by our house the day after our weekly high school football game, you would see my uniform hanging on our clothesline to dry. She washed it herself because all the moms had to launder their son’s uniforms. While on her knees beside the bathtub, she scrubbed the grass stains out of the white pants. But my uniform did not hang on the line alone. Two or three more would be next to it. You see, she would scrub and wash the uniforms of a couple of my friends because their moms worked outside the home.

Share Your Table with Friends

The guys (and sometimes the gals) ate at my house often. We devoured a lot of chicken fried steak. She would feed us before our ball games, after our ball games, on Saturdays, on Sundays.

Do Life with Others at Your House

Our house was always open to others. If we were not hosting my friends, we were hosting my brother’s friends or some group from the church. It seems like someone lived with us almost every summer.

Love the Broken and Hurting

My mom was always doing things for the kids on the fringes, the ones who often went unnoticed. Our house was adjacent to the schoolyard, and my brother and I walked home for lunch every day. A few years ago, one of our friends who had a troubled family life, told me that she watched us go to lunch every day and could picture herself sitting with us at Mildred’s table.

I could keep the list going, but you get the picture.

A Faithful Servant

Mildred Sanders became a Christian when she was 22 years old at the same time as my dad. Mom died at the age of 82 in March of 2012 after having served the Lord for 60 years.

She was a children’s Sunday school teacher for 45 years and taught her class up until three months before she died. She served as a GA and Acteen leader. For 25 years, Mom gave direction to the funeral and hospitality committee of our church.

Mom went on five overseas mission trips to Germany (twice), Korea, Ecuador, and Norway and participated in 141 Lay Renewal/Experiencing God weekends across 18 states. The last one, when she was 81 years old.

But understand this. She never lived more than eight miles from where she was born on a cotton farm in Haskell County.

Here’s today’s missional thought…

You are never too isolated or too old to live on mission with Jesus.

Grace and peace on your journey…