Our need to be loved was put there by God Himself, and it was He who also made provision for the great need to be met in our families. Do you remember the familiar words of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, "And now abide faith, hope, love, but the greatest of these is love"? No matter how great the need for love, it seems that our capacity to love each other has been seriously diminished in the world of quick fixes and fractured, broken relationships.
Have you ever asked yourself, "What has happened to our ability to love?" Has it been gassed by the pernicious fumes that have polluted our environment? Or has it simply been pushed aside by our selfish desire for gratification? I asked myself that question as I picked up the paper and read of a three-year-old who was seriously injured in an automobile accident.
The three-year-old was paralyzed from the neck down, but what was more distressing was the fact that his mother told reporters she did not intend to visit the boy in the hospital, because she no longer wanted to be bothered with a crippled son. There is a good ending to this story, though. Dr. Gray Gieseke, the neurosurgeon who treated the boy, told his wife about the three-year-old boy who had no visitors. That was when she started visiting the little fellow every afternoon, and eventually grew to love him. The doctor and his wife adopted the boy and gave him the love that he needed.
But countless other children are crippled emotionally and psychologically by a lack of parental love. Talk to a counselor in a juvenile detention home or prison, and you will discover that almost all the juvenile offenders have at least one thing in common–they came from a home where love was missing. The home is the great classroom where a child first learns what love is by responding to it as an infant. As a child, he observes it in the lives of his parents and in his own way begins to practice it.
But what of the parent who honestly confesses to have no love for a child? Is it not natural for a mother to love her child? Before you answer that, think for a moment. First, it is perfectly normal for every parent to have days when God’s precious jewels are only semi-precious. It may be one of those days when you are tired and your nerves are on edge. Every time you try to get your face washed, a three-year-old bangs on the door loud enough to wake the dead. You hear a little voice say, "Mommy, mommy" every thirty seconds for most of your waking day. In an unguarded moment you may think, "I just cannot stand my kids. I would do anything to get away from them."
Every mother has that need periodically, but does that mean she doesn’t love her child? Not for a moment! Yet there are parents who really have no love for their children. How else explain the bizarre happenings that have filled our papers in recent time as parents–for only God knows what reasons–have killed their own offspring? There are people who have lost their love for each other and for their children, because their hearts are hardened and they have lost their capacity to love.
Has your ability to love been stifled by the cares of living, hardened by the push to get ahead? Then, friend, it’s time to get your priorities straightened out–which begins with the source of love, God Himself. "God is love" and "The one who does not love, does not know God" wrote the Apostle John (1 John 4:8, nasb). When you allow God to touch your life, one of the first results is a new capacity to let love flow through you. It’s the only solution to a tough issue.
Resource reading: Romans 5:1-11