Erich Fromm, an oft-quoted psychologist, believes the loneliness and the inability to love are the causes of disorders in the emotions and psyche. Scores of social scientists have aptly demonstrated that love is absolutely essential to life itself. No person can be a well-rounded individual if he is unable to relate to the world about him, if he has not discovered the power of love.
"There comes a time in the development of every person," says Joshua Liebman in his book Peace of Mind, "when he must love his neighbor or become a twisted, stunted personality."
It was such a person who was in a women’s prison in Paris. She was lonely, afraid, angry, and bitter, and resisted the attempt of people to break through the barrier she had built around her.
But a little woman who worked among the prisoners there knew that love was more powerful than the hatred this prisoners had grown up with. As she would visit the prison, she would speak to this woman who hurled back bitter epithets and demanded to be left alone. Nonetheless, she kept on offering Gospel tracts and telling the prisoner that God loved her no matter how far she had strayed from His presence. The response of this particular woman was to snarl, "Nobody loves me! Don’t talk to me!" For several years every attempt to bridge the barrier was met with rebuff, but in the meanwhile the little French woman prayed that God would somehow give her an opportunity to express love. Then the opportunity came with a spontaneity that had the breath of heaven.
On that particular day, the woman who worked in the prison began her rounds, passing through the jail as she normally did each week. As she passed the bunk of this woman who seemed so hardened and hateful, she stopped and, without really thinking, bent over and kissed the prisoner on the forehead. At first the woman reeled back and drew up her arm in anger, as though she was going to strike the woman who had planted a kiss on her forehead. Looking up into the face of her undeserved friend, she began to weep and then sob almost uncontrollably. "Why did you kiss me?" she asked. "Nobody has kissed me for many years. Kick me, strike me, use me and leave me but kiss me, no." You can chalk up one more for the healing power of love.
Individuals who have grown up in a home where there was little or no love find it difficult to give and receive love. You may be one of them. Nonetheless, there is no person alive anywhere who doesn’t respond to the power of love. As Karl Menninger wrote, love is the antidote to the problems of the world.
I’ve often thought of that woman in the Paris prison, and I see my old nature in that story. As a loving God reaches down to me in love, my old self wants to pull away, thinking, "I don’t need your help or love!" Paul understood, for he wrote, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). That’s the acid test–a demonstration of love so costly that it required the very life of God’s Son!
What’s the bottom line? Two thoughts: 1) Don’t give up striving to reach out in love when your attempts to love are rebuffed. And, 2) When people attempt to show love in your life, realize that their love not only meets a need in your life but in theirs as well. That’s the way God made us! - Resource reading: Luke 15:11-31