The village in which I live has a strong connection with Mother's Day.  Coddington in Nottinghamshire, UK, was the home of Constance Penswick-Smith, who was responsible for a campaign for reintroducing the original interpretation of the Mother's Day to the UK, after it had become turned into something else from what was then a new American tradtion - a more secular version of Mother's Day. Constance Penswick-Smith, a rector's daughter, wanted the day to return to its Christian roots. There are therefore two separate dates on either side of the Atlantic to this day.

Centuries ago, however, Mother's Day was different to what we know it to be today.  As now, it always fell on the third Sunday before Easter.  People of the time, epescially those in small rural communities, returned to their 'mother church', even if they had moved away for marriage or work reasons.  The tradition later built up in which young children would give their mothers posies of flowers, and hence the tradition we have today.

Although we wouldn't readily use the term 'mother church' these days, the notion of a place we regard as our spiritual home is as real now as it was hundreds of years ago.  I came to Fiskerton for the first time when I was a troubled seventeen-year-old in 1979.  It was over an hour's drive each Satuday evening, but it became the place I now call home. 

The building isn't anything of itself, it's simply a focus for the activity within it. For decades people have gathered together to glorify the Living God there. Once touched, they could never be the same again, and no matter where they went from there, or for how long, their roots lie in that which happened to them in Fiskerton.

¹² The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;

¹³ planted in the house of the LORD, they will flourish in the courts of our God.

¹⁴ They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh andgreen,

¹⁵ proclaiming, The LORD is upright; he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him._{Psalm 92: 12-25}