Under Her Wings
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.”
— Matthew 23:37 AMP
There is something deeply moving about the image Jesus chooses here.
In one of His final laments over Jerusalem, He doesn’t reach for the imagery of a warrior charging into battle or a king seated on a throne. He speaks instead of a mother bird gathering her young beneath her wings.
I’ve often read this passage with compassion, but recently I began to notice the strength inside it.
A mother hen covering her young is not fragile imagery. It is protective imagery. It is fierce in its own way. She spreads herself over vulnerable lives and places her own body between them and the storm.
That instinct to gather, protect, nurture, and shelter life reveals something important about the heart of God. Jesus uses feminine imagery here to describe His own longing toward His people.
“How often I wanted to gather you.”
That sounds like the heart of an ezer kenegdo.
When most people hear the word “helper” in Genesis, they imagine someone secondary, someone assisting quietly from the background. But the Hebrew word ezer is used throughout Scripture to describe God Himself as a rescuer, strength, and defender.
Woman was not created as an afterthought to man. She was formed as his counterpart; strong where he is weak, discerning where he is clouded, nurturing where life has become harsh, and courageous enough to stand beside him in the battles of life. Not merely companion, but life-giver, protector, nurturer, and strengthener. Man’s perfect match.
There is a reason healthy femininity carries such power in the human story. Women carry the unique ability to make space for life to flourish.
I think about mothers who have stayed awake through the night beside sick children. Wives who quietly carried hope for their families when everyone else was exhausted. Grandmothers who prayed generations forward without needing recognition. Spiritual mothers who nurtured hearts back to life through wisdom, gentleness, presence, and blessing.
So much of the strength that has held the world together has been the hidden strength of women. Not loud, controlling, or performative, but faithful.
There is a kind of covering women carry that reflects the very heart of God.
You can see it in the way a mother gathers frightened children close after a nightmare. You can see it in the wife who senses discouragement in her husband before he has words for it. You can see it in the women who create warmth, belonging, beauty, and safety in places that otherwise would have become cold. And you can see it in how a mother protects her children when threatened by harm.
That is not weakness. It is Kingdom strength expressed through love.
And maybe that is why the enemy wars so fiercely against femininity itself. Because when redeemed femininity is present, people encounter something profoundly restorative about the heart and nature of God.
The world desperately needs strong men. That is true.
But it also desperately needs women who know the beauty and strength of who they are as ezer; not striving to become less feminine in order to become powerful, but fully alive in the sacred strength God placed within them from the beginning.
This Mother’s Day, I am grateful for the women who have gathered others beneath their wings; the mothers who protected more than they will ever receive credit for, the wives who carried courage into dark seasons, the grandmothers who covered families in prayer, and the spiritual mothers who nurtured weary hearts back toward Jesus.
Thank you for the ways you reflect the heart of God through your strength, tenderness, wisdom, and love.
The world is warmer because you are here.
Happy Mother’s Day!
“The Lord bless you, and keep you;
The Lord cause His face to shine on you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His face to you,
And give you peace.”
— Numbers 6:24–26 NASB
