There are people in this world that have been shown very little love; and almost none by those that God sent to nurture. Does that mean their parents? Yes, but it doesn’t stop there. God sent each of us to nurture one another. Nurture means to: “care for” – “cherish” – “encourage.” Jesus said, “Love one another.” Too many times the same people that have seen very little love have been used as a target of someone’s selfish physical desires. The very idea of what love is to them, is the definition of hate. Their need for love has been used to destroy their self worth. Then society blames them for their lack of ability to have socially acceptable moral relationships.

How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher (Romans 10:14)? Take a moment of time and think about what that means. How will you believe what you have not been taught? Is the opposite not true? What you believe is what you have been taught. Teaching is interactive. What I believe, I first must have experienced or had a person to tell me about. If the one that taught me about love only knew hate; what have I learned about love. Nurture means to care for someone or something that does or doesn’t know how to take care. Love is for those that do not know how to be loved, as much as it is for those that have been taught by love.

There is a saying, “You do not throw out the baby with the bathwater.” But we do. We throw out babies we have never washed. We do not assign less value to the unborn than we do to those born into this life. We assign value by what we receive – we receive nothing from the unborn or from those alive that we ignore. True value is not what is taken out of something, but what is put into something. We value some people less, because we have put nothing into them. We devalue some unborn because we have nothing to deposit into them. We do the same with some that are alive in this world. We throw out the baby to keep from getting the bathwater dirty.

But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life (Titus 3:4-7). Again, take a moment and think about that piece of scripture. God sent His Son to show His love, not because of our righteousness, but because of His great mercy. God values us, not based on what we are, but because of what He is willing to pour into us. We were, and are, not in right standing except that He loves us and justifies (adjusts our value) us by His grace.

Through the grace of God, I have met some who are recovering from a life of abuse and misdirected ideas about love. It is through the grace of God that they are recovering. Someone took time to show them love. Not someone that has all the answers to all of their issues, according to man’s idea of problem resolution, but someone that cares just a little. By the grace of God, I am one that was not nurtured as a child that is recovering. Parents abandoned or abused the love of the innocent; the church ignored the voice of a child; society joined the church in ignoring the child, until they had something to accuse him of. But God did not ignore nor did He accuse. God loved and listened to the voice of the child. God sent His Son two thousand years ago to heal, because He heard the voice of the child crying today. Within the adults that we throw away, there is still the voice of the child.

© 2008, Tim D. Coulter Sr.