Satan Hates Mothers

Can you guess who this baby is?

I’ll give you a hint.

Germany

World War II

Funny black mustache

It is Adolf Hitler as a baby.

The first time I saw this picture I was astonished. He looks cute, really cute. In fact at this point in his life he could have been just like my little baby… he was pure, innocent and had all the potential for good. You’ d never guess by looking at this picture that this baby would turn out to me one of the most evil and twisted men of the 20th century.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this picture the last few weeks, ever since I started writing my post on the concubine in Judges 19. It really surprised me as I was writing her post the incredible amount of sorrow I felt, not only for her, but also for the men who raped her. My heart ached as I wondered, “What does it do to a man’s soul to do those sort of things to another person?”

As I watched the video about the rapes in Congo I felt the same sorrow and my heart broke as I remember that each one of those men were the sons of other women. I remembered that for each of those rapists there was a woman who had carried that man within her, who had shed her blood giving him birth, who had nursed him at her breast and who had loved, and who probably still loved, him… and there he was doing those sort of things to another woman.

Sometimes the wickedness of the world overwhelms me. I can’t bear the grief I feel as I witness the suffering of God’s daughters on this earth. The darkness seems impenetrable. Yet I see a fire of hope in the story (told in the video about Congo) of the young woman who was rapped in front of her family, kidnapped, and forced to be a sex slave for soldiers. When she finally escaped months later she found she was pregnant with a child of one of her rapists. After telling her story the video later shows this same young woman nursing a little daughter, the child of her rapist, as she participated in a literacy class. I couldn’t help but cry as I watched this woman nurse. It awed me that, even though that child had been conceived in the most horrible way imaginable, this woman was still willing and ready to welcome that precious spirit into the world and to give it her love. What a testament that is to me of the power of women and of our great capacity for love.

It is for this reason, our divine ability to love and sacrifice, that Satan hates women– especially mothers. He has never had a mother and he will never have one. No woman will ever shed her blood to create him a mortal body and because of that he is eternally damned.. stopped in his progression…. dead. All his tools are aimed in one direction… at women… at mothers… if he knows if he can bring us down, if he can stop us conceiving, bearing, and loving God’s children then he gains power.

Hitler‘s baby picture reminds me to never underestimate the importance of my role as a mother and to never stop loving these souls who have been entrusted to me — even on those days when my two-year-old has orchestrated a peanut butter/Lego/book/car holocaust in my front room and violated mandates of the Geneva Convention on his little sister.

Satan, I’m just telling you now. No matter how hard things get, no matter what bad choices these children may make, no matter what we go through…

…I’m never going to stop loving… ever.

I knew you’d hate that.