LOVE: It's What Makes A Human Being A Human Being

Love is what gives us life, and what sustains our life.

A child's "failure to thrive" and even survive can be the result not only of genetic or medical conditions, but to a lack of nurturing relationships with loving caregivers. To be loved, held, touched, embraced, and interacted with from infancy is vital to a child's healthy development, and to his or her ability to grow up being able to love and care for others.

In understaffed orphanages in war-ravaged Europe in the last century, children who were kept in cribs, where they may have been routinely fed and diapered but provided little else, grew up being unable to talk, walk or care for themselves, demonstrating that it takes loving interactions with human beings to produce thriving human beings. And many of these children simply died.

As we grow into adulthood, we continue to need God-given love in a network of caring relationships in order to maintain good emotional and physical health. In an age of communicating through texts and experiencing fewer than ever close bonds with others, I'm concerned about increased incidents of depression, anxiety disorders and even suicide.

Our local RISE congregation has as one of its mantra's "Receive Love. Give Love. Repeat." That pretty much sums up what makes us healthy and happy children of God. Without it, we find ourselves seeking every substitute possible to fill up the hole in our soul, and then wonder why we are left with a sense of loneliness and despair.