First Marc My Sabbath · Mother's Day · May 10, 2026

The first Marc My Sabbath.

Sunday, May 10, 2026. Mother's Day. The Sixth Sunday of Easter.

Isaiah said "Here am I, send me" — but only after he saw the Lord, saw himself, and grace touched his lips. The order matters more than the slogan does.

This homily gathers the week's daily words into one through-line. It listens carefully to three Mother's Day witnesses from yesterday's 1440 News digest. It names a complicated mother story I have spent years carrying. And it ends with the prayer the week has been writing toward without my knowing.

The answer does not have to be loud. It does not have to be impressive. It only has to be honest.

Lord, here I am. I am not perfect, and I am not without fear. I am willing. Send me.

I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.

Grace and Peace.

CHAPTERS

00:00 — Welcome and the rooms of Mother's Day
00:32 — Isaiah 6:8 and the order before the slogan
02:15 — Holiness, honesty, grace, calling
03:10 — Three witnesses from 1440 News
06:41 — Mother's Day is complicated for some of us
07:54 — The word for this Mother's Day Sabbath
08:43 — My own mother, Doris
09:22 — The women who have been forming me
10:56 — The closing prayer

MUSIC FOR THIS EPISODE

A Song For Mama — Boyz II Men
https://youtu.be/vdTnuc3ktzo

In My Life — The Beatles
https://youtu.be/YBcdt6DsLQA

Lean on Me — Bill Withers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOZ-MySzAac

LINKS

Read this homily and the daily word: graceandpeacestudio.com
Subscribe to the daily word: graceandpeacestudio.com/daily-word
Substack: substack.com/@marcbulandr
Linktree: linktr.ee/marcbulandr

ABOUT MARC MY SABBATH

Marc My Sabbath is the weekly homily released on Sundays as part of Marc My Words. It gathers the prior six days of daily scripture words into one message, set against what is happening in the world, with music chosen to carry the weight that argument alone cannot.

Grace and Peace.

🎙️ Follow & Connect

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📷 Instagram: @PayItForwardMarc

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💼 LinkedIn: Marc Bulandr

Transcript

0:01

Grace and peace to you. It is Mother's Day morning. Some of you woke up to a phone call you've been waiting for. Some of you woke up to silence on a phone that will not ring again. For others, the day finds an old ache. A mother lost years ago, a child you hoped for but never held, or a relationship too complicated for a greeting card. This Sabbath is for all of those rooms. The text today is one of the most quoted sentences in scripture. Here I am, send me. Isaiah 6 verse 8. People love that line. They put it on coffee mugs. They paint it on classroom walls. They use it in mission statements. They quote it like Isaiah was standing there confident, ready and eager. But that is not what happened. If you read the chapter from the beginning, the order is different than the slogan suggests. First Isaiah saw the Lord, high and lifted up, the room shook, smoke filled the temple, seraphim covered their faces with their wings. Then Isaiah saw himself. And what he said was not, send me. What he said was, woe is me. For I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. He felt undone. He saw what he was, and he was not impressed with himself. Then Grace touched him. A seraph came with a coal from the altar and touched his lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for. And only then did Isaiah hear the question, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Only then did the answer come. Here I am, send me. That order matters more than the slogan does. Holiness, honesty, grace, calling. Most of us want to skip the calling. We want to be sent before we have been seen. We want the assignment without the altar. But Isaiah's pattern is the opposite. For Isaiah, grace came before calling, cleansing came before sending. I have been preaching to myself this week. I have been writing towards this question all week without knowing I was writing towards it. And this week landed here on Mother's Day on Isaiah 6, 8. It landed on a question that does not require me to be ready. It only requires me to be willing. I want to talk about mothers for a moment, because today is the day to do it. Yesterday morning I was reading the 1440, the daily news digest I use as part of my morning grounding. Yesterday's 1440 paused its usual rhythm. In honor of Mother's Day, the editors stepped back from the daily news and printed something different. They opened the page to readers and asked them to tell stories about their mothers. Three of those stories caught me. One was from a woman named Ashley in Canfield, Ohio. She wrote about her mother who watched her walk through fire more times than any parent should have to watch a child walk through it. Through addiction, through the long road to sobriety, through a cancer diagnosis, through raising two special needs boys while pursuing graduate school. Ashley wrote, She never wavered, she never flinched, she just kept showing up, cheering louder than anyone in the room, loving me before I knew how to love myself. The second was from a man named Wendell in Ventura, California. He wrote about his mother, Betty, five foot two, fifth child of a traveling salesman, survivor of the Great Depression. When Wendell was a small boy struggling to write with his right hand, Betty walked into the school and confronted his teacher and his principal, both men, and said, If the boy wants to use his left hand, let him. Decades later when Wendell was a senior in high school, the same Betty told her last baby, go explore the world and love your life. The third was a man named Stephen in Provo, Utah. He wrote about a memory from his childhood. He had gotten angry with his mother. He threw every insult at her. He told her he would leave the family the moment he could. And his mother calmly, without raising her voice, replied, and I'll love you anyways. Stephen wrote that her answer stopped his argument so hard that he could not reply. He could not deny it was true. Three witnesses, three different shapes of mother love. None of them called what they did ministry. But all of them were sent. They cooked, they prayed, they cheered, they confronted school officials, they held the line through addiction. They said, I'll love you anyways. When their own children threw fire at them. They lived as sent people who never needed the title to do the work. That is Isaiah's answer in plain clothes. Here I am, send me. It does not always sound like a prophet in a smoke-filled temple. It can sound like a depression-era woman walking into a principal's office, a mother sitting beside a hospital bed. or four words spoken to an angry teenager who needed to hear them. Mother's Day is complicated for some of us. For some, it is pure joy. For others, it carries grief, distance, regret, or relationships that were what they never were what they were supposed to be. I will not pretend I do not know that. What I want to say this morning is simpler than the complications. God forms us through people. Some of those people were beautiful. Some were broken. Some carried light into our lives without knowing they were carrying it. Some left wounds that still ache. God wastes none of it. He shapes us through love, deepens us through loss and renews us through gratitude. And then he asks the question, whom shall I send? You do not need to clean up the whole story before God can use it. You only need to bring it into the light. So here is the word for this Mother's Day Sabbath. If you're a mother reading this, your faithful, ordinary work is seen by God. The cooking, the praying, the cheering, the confronting, the holding the line, the, and I'll love you anyways. You may never call it ministry. He does. If your mother gave you light, name her in your heart this morning and give thanks. Memory is witness. If your mother gave you complications, you are allowed to bring that to God too. You do not have to pretend. He can hold the truth of the relationship without losing track of you. My own mother is in that complicated category. Her name was Doris. The relationship was hard. She died alone in 2016 and I learned about it after the fact. I've spent years trying to understand what to do with that and I've not figured all of it out. But I've learned this much. God can hold what I cannot. The wound is real. The grace is also real. And on a Mother's Day Sabbath, I'm willing to name her in the light. I am one of those men. The women in my life have been forming me for as long as I can remember. Jennifer has walked through every season I've walked through and held the line when I could not. Haley, who teaches me what steady love looks like in real time. Darcy, who chose to join this family and brings light into it. Joan, who was a surrogate mother to me when I needed one. Nancy, a professor who shaped how I think and has been a constant positive presence in my life. so many others whose names belong here too. None of them called what they did ministry. All of them lived as sent people. And whoever you are, if you've been waiting for the conditions to be perfect before you answer God's call, stop waiting. The slogan is wrong. The order is right. Grace before calling. Cleansing before sending. Honesty before assignment. God is not asking you to prove you are ready. He is asking you to make yourself available. The answer does not have to be loud. It does not have to be impressive. It only has to be honest. Lord, here I am. I am not perfect and I am not without fear. I am willing. Send me. I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make him visible. And so we trust. Grace and peace. Amen.