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The Power of Love

L
es Brown, an Emergency Technician, was driving home from a busy day at work when he heard an emergency call on his car radio scanner. A child was choking and in need of immediate help.

The police dispatched a rescue squad but Les, realizing he was only a few blocks away, knew that he could get there sooner. He radioed the police to tell them that he was also on the way. When he tried to exit the freeway, he couldn't. A large caterpillar tractor had dug a deep trench right across the exit.

Les pulled to the side, jumped from his car and yelled to the tractor driver, "There's a baby in trouble down the street. I have to get there urgently!"

Immediately, the man filled in a large part of the trench he'd spent all day digging, packed the fill down and waved Les across. Les rushed to where the call came from. There he found a frantic mother waiting for help to arrive. The baby she was holding had turned purple. Les grabbed the child, put him over his knee and carefully hit him on the back and out popped a button from his mouth. Much to the mother's relief, the child breathed again.

On the way home the following evening Les noticed the tractor working at the same exit so he pulled over to tell the driver what had happened. When the man saw him, he jumped from his tractor and this time he yelled to Les, "The baby you saved yesterday ... That was my baby! Mine! Mine!"

Here we see genuine love in action and such love has many facets. In the powerful words of Scripture, it is patient, thoughtful, kind and forgiving. It isn't jealous, proud, boasting, self-seeking, rude or easily angered. Nor does it keep a record of wrongs. "It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. It never fails."¹

This kind of love cares, commits, communicates and has compassion—all of which include involvement—and makes life worthwhile. Without this kind of love we may exist, but we cannot live life to the full.

Only loved people
find mature love.

Both experience and scientific tests have shown that babies who don't receive sufficient love, care and holding can die. Children who don't feel loved can become very aggressive or withdrawn. Teenagers may end up depressed, suicidal, on drugs, or in jail. Adults can become victims of any of a number of addictive substances or practices all of which are a vain attempt to fill the empty hole in their heart and deaden the pain of their hollow lives. Or they can become very ill—physically, emotionally and/or spiritually.

Some who don't feel loved, feel inadequate and powerless and often use control as a poor substitute for empowerment.

Others who didn't feel loved, especially as children, unconsciously seek to replace parental love in romantic relationships and marriage. But no spouse can ever meet their mate's unmet childhood need for mother or father-love. Others substitute sex for love and leave a trail of victims in their attempt to fill their empty void and avoid facing the cause of their emptiness and loneliness.

How then can we find the love we need and be genuinely empowered for life?

Recovery
Realize that the answer is not found in fame, fortune, popularity, sex, exciting "bells and whistle" romance, achievement or approval but through recovery. The harsh reality is that only loved people find true love, and in the words of another, "We find it within or we find it not!"

Honesty
Recovery begins when we admit the truth to ourselves and to a trusted friend or two—that we don't feel loved or we didn't feel loved as children and that we have spent too much effort looking for love in all the wrong places.

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