This week I want to begin by talking about everyone's
favorite Hungarian psychoanalyst,
Rene' Spitz.
I don't know if he's your favorite Hungarian psychoanalyst, but ...
Rene' Spitz was a very famous psychoanalyst who died in 1974.
But I want to tell you about his most famous study.
In his most famous study, he studied the lives
of 97 children ages birth through three years old.
Ninety-seven children who grew up in a
South American orphanage because he wanted
to see if he could learn anything from the type of care that they received.
The reason he picked that particular orphanage
was because it was an orphanage that was under staffed.
There were enough nurses to
change their diapers and give them food. But,
they were insufficiently staffed to such an extent that
there wasn't ever any time for the nurses to hug the children
or to rock them
or to spend any time talking with them.
It was just task after task after task.
Diaper after diaper after diaper.
And it was just food after food after food. But ...
but never any time to just spend time with them.
It was interesting what he discovered as he observed the lives of these children.
After one year,
a number of the children, even though they were getting enough food
and even though their diapers were changed and everything sufficiently,
a number of them were
losing, they were unhealthy.
They were losing unhealthy weight.
After two years,
a number of them were so unstable,
it was obvious that they were so unstable emotionally
that when a nurse would pick them up,
they would start screaming violently.
As if something so unusual were happening.
As he observed them through three years old,
a number of the children, almost 30 of the children died
before the age of three.
And as he observed them over the course of their life,
only a handful of them got into adulthood.
And the majority of those who got into adulthood
ended up suffering severe psychological trauma
that they carried with them for the rest of their lives.
And from that study,
what he concluded
was really something that the Bible has been saying from the very beginning.
That we were created to be loved.
God created us to be loved.
And this week we're going to spend some time talking about what that means.
And what that looks like when we extended that love to others.
But this week as we begin a week in which
we focus on God's love, I want to remind you
of two important aspects of God's love for you.
And the first one is this:
That God loves you.
God loves you uniquely.
Uniquely.
In Psalm 139,
addressing God, the psalmist says,
Or another way to summarize what that passage says is
you wouldn't be here
if God did not want you to be here.
You would not be who you are
if God did not want you to be exactly who you are.
There has never been another you
in the history of this whole world.
God loves you uniquely.
He considers the work
of putting your life together and putting your body together wonderful.
You are a wonderful work of God.
And the second aspect of God's love that I want us to
collectively celebrate this week is this:
it's that God loves you closely.
He loves you closely.
You think about the care of
a mother holding her child.
How safe
that child will feel in mother's arms.
And then listen to this verse,
where it's talking about Jesus as our Good Shepherd.
It says:
That's where you always are.
In God's care.
You are always close to his heart.
Close enough to his heart
that he will always, that he will always keep you there.
Always.
No matter what it would cost him.
This week we rejoice in the love
and we talk about how to express that same type of love
towards the people around us.
Today we talked about how God loves
you uniquely and he loves you closely.
But as you probably know, it's not always easy to feel that that's true.
Sometimes we don't feel that
there's anything all that special about us
and we don't feel that God is anywhere close to us.
And if you know somebody in your world who's feeling that way right now,
somebody who feels kind of alone.
Somebody you feels like nobody's giving them their good attention,
would you consider sharing this video with them as a way to remind them
that God loves them?
That God sees them.
That they are uniquely and closely loved by God himself.
As a way to remind them of that and also as a way to
encourage them to watch the rest of the videos on love that we'll see this week.
We'll see you tomorrow.