Are You a Good Mother or a Bad Mother
The title is paraphrasing Dorothy Gale from the movie The Wizard of OZ. It can be difficult to tell the difference just by looking. I am working my way through the Old Testament. I began jotting down the names of the women mentioned on an index card. To my surprise I have filled three cards front, back and margins and started a fourth. Some of the women's names are probably well known to you. Heroes like Marian and Rahab, strong leaders like Deborah, great beauties like Bathsheba and beautiful evil ones like Jezabel and Delilah. There are so many more, their names are listed with the description as "mother of....". This puzzled me for a while. If this was their only claim to fame why were they actually named? Today, on this eve of Mother's Day (a holiday that did not exist as far as we know in Biblical times) the significance hit me. The mothers of particularly successful Godly men were named. The mothers of exceptionally evil leaders were named, often with