Where It All Begins

SERMON “Where It All Begins”
I John 4:7-21
May 10, 2009 Mother’s Day
Dr. Dennis Ginoza

To you all: Happy Mother’s Day!

One day a woman boarded a bus with 11 children. The
bus driver said to her, “Lady, are they all yours,
or are you on a picnic?” “They are all mine,”
said the lady, and believe me, it’s no picnic.”

When our boys were still young, I thought to myself:
what if one of us was gone, what would life be
for them? …..It brought tears in my eyes.

Today, let us give thanks to God for all our mothers for
The first touch,
The first expression of love,
The first bonding with mother.

I didn’t know this when I was growing up, but my older
brothers told me that after my mom had six children,
three boys and three girls, they thought that she
would go before my dad. She was still in her forties.
My dad was 30 when he married my mom; she was 17.
My dad died at age 68; my mother is 94 today

When we were growing up, life was not easy. Clothes
were washed by hand. Remember the old wash
boards. I remember my dad going around the
house saying, “Who left the lights on? Turn off the
lights.” Once I wanted to go to the movies and my
mom said, “You can’t.” I asked “Why?” She said,
“We don’t have any money.” Movies cost 50 cents
then. We didn’t get our first telephone till I was a
freshman in high school. My dad never learned to
drive until he was 65 years old. When he retired he
got a job at the Kaanapali Hotel nursery, he needed
to learn to drive. One thing about being poor in those
days—everybody else was poor.

You heard the adage: “There is no free lunch.” When we
had no telephone, no cars, no television, what we
had were lot of good friends and we learned right
away, the importance of family.
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My sermon topic today is; “Where It All Begins.”
The Bible teaches us—In the beginning it was
God who created this world. From Genesis to
to Revelation, it starts with God and it ends
with God. Tell me: can someone tell me—
what is the first word in the Bible and what is
the last word? …….Anyone? ……… You
got it. In… and …..amen. In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth. In
Revelation, it says, The Lord said, “I am coming
soon.” Amen.

In the Bible, in I John, it says that God is love. Those who
abide in love, abide in God. There is no fear
in love and love casts out fear. Then I John says,
“Those who say, “I love God but hate their brothers
and sisters, are liars.”

There is a Jewish proverb that says, “God couldn’t be
everywhere so he made mothers.”

God took the fragrance of the flower,
The majesty of a tree,
The gentleness of morning dew,
The calm of a quiet sea,
The beauty of the twilight hour,
The soul of a starry night,
The laughter of a rippling brook,
The grace of a bird in flight,
The tender care of an angel,
The faith of a mustard seed,
The patience of …whole eternity,
The very depth of a family’s need,
Then! … God fashioned all, all of
these splendid creation of no other.
When God’s great masterpiece was
through, He just simply called it,
MOTHER!

A mother has to deal with boys and with girls,
and the telephone and the child’s
teacher and the broken down car, and
the dog and the cat and the dad and
and everything else under the sun. We say Yeah!
to our mothers!

3

Thelma Sprowls’ mother, Frances Adam was
a poet. She wrote a poem entitled Fifteen.

When a boy is fifteen, he isn’t a man.
But he isn’t a little boy either.
To be both, he tries as hard as he can.
The result is, he is usually neither.

The little boy goes with the kids to play ball,
Or rides on his bike in the street.
Then all of a sudden the young man calls,
And he tries, oh so hard, to be neat.

The young man combs his hair and shines his shoes,
And insists that his pants have a crease.
Then little boy whispers, “Aw, what’s the use.”
And the efforts at neatness soon cease.

Neither boy nor man holds sway all the time.
First one, then the other is seen.
A boy’s life has no reason or thyme
When he reaches the age of fifteen.

She also wrote poem entitled Food, Patty’s Pig, Those
Measly Measles, Anti-Gossip, War Mother’s Plea,
and to her daughter Thelma, she wrote: “You’ll
never know the happiness that you have given me.”
Frances Adams, she lost her mother when she was
eleven and her husband when he was forty-four.

When I first met my wife Sylvia, I learned that she
got a teaching degree from Iowa State Teacher’s
College at Cedar Falls and her master’s degree from
the University of Kentucky in Lexington. I also
learned that she was the valedictorian of her high
school graduating class: so I knew she was smart.
I also learned from her sister Bonnie that when Bonnie
was outside mowing the lawn, Sylvia was inside
reading her book. As a little girl, she had the makings
of a librarian, and that’s what she is.

When Aaron was a little boy, he didn’t like scrabbled eggs,
but he liked Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham. So one
4
day, Sylvia put green coloring on the scrabbled eggs, and
Aaron, Aaron liked it! When Jeremy was born, Dr.
Laura would love to hear this, she became a stay home mom.
Ever since that day, Sylvia never worked full-time. How nice!

So today, I want to thank Sylvia for being mom to Jeremy and
to Aaron. I took the boys to the ballpark, she took the
boys to the library. I taught the boys to drive a stick shift
car, she brought home the books. Every Sunday, I would
be at the pulpit preaching, she was there in the pew with
the boys. I must also tell you this, Sylvia never
had a lack of job. She was hired part-time at the Calexico
Library, the Quaker Church in La Jolla, the California Home
Stay program with students from Japan and Brazil; that was
in Santee. That gave her a free trip to Japan, I had to pay my
own way. She worked at a dentist office in Woodland Hills.
She worked full-time in Pomona, and part-time in the libraries
at Chula Vista, Carlsbad and Fallbrook.

I want to say, Sylvia, thank you for being Mom to Jeremy and
Aaron. Today, Aaron is in Washington, D.C. and the
pastor of the United Methodist Church had asked him to
give a talk on his belief in the Resurrection. ….Jeremy.
I asked Jeremy to share a few thoughts.


JEREMY’S THOUGHTS ABOUT MOM


Before we are born in this world, there is a lot of preparation
that goes on in that other world—the Pre-Birth World.
There must be. We must be told that this is an imperfect
world and we are sent here to make it better. We must
be told, “And don’t mess up!” Noah, Moses, and Elijah
got the message. And Jesus came to transform the world.

Jesus teaches us, there is a binding force that holds
everything together. Love is patient, love is kind,
love is never jealous or envious. Love gives and gives
and gives. Just before Jesus died, he entrusted his
mother Mary into the hands of the beloved disciple. To
John he said, “Here is your mother.” To Mary he said,
“Here is your son.”
God is good, All the time.
All the time, God is good.