I have this memory of my mother kneeling before my brother and the cross, pleading with my brother to change his ways. Sounds like an impossible scene in your household? I woke up to see this one night several years ago. I could not recall the reason for that scene but that night has left a mark on my heart.

Sometimes, I still see that pained look in my mother's eyes. That look was there on her face when I arrived home that night. It always appear when my brother breaks her heart. It always appear when my father screams at her for tiny things. And it always appear when I disappoint her.

Sometimes I wonder why does she spend so much time and effort on us? Why still place hope in my brother when he can scream at his parents, complain to his friends about his parents in their presence, demands his ways and treats their love as a right? I don't think I'll understand that until I am a mother myself. For only a mother can say that another person is "bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh."

As I see two mothers worry over their respective sons this week, I recognise that a mother's love is second largest to God's agape love.