What the World Needs Now…
Go ahead and finish it…come on, you know the words…
"What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It's the only thing that there's just too little of..".
This beautifully written song was composed back in 1965 by Burt Bacharach, with lyrics by Hal David. While the song is almost 50 years old, the lyrics resonate in our hearts because at the end of the day, life really is all about love. Mother Teresa explained our over-whelming need for love this way, “We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked, and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for is the greatest poverty.”
I wrote a blog a couple of days ago about the folks camping out in front of Best Buy waiting for the Black Friday deals. While I love a great deal on something, just like everyone else…our love is not expressed in the things we buy people, it is expressed in the time we give them.
My wife, Stephanie, and I have a unique perspective in this area. During our marriage we have adopted two children- a 6-year old little girl from El Salvador, and a 3-year old little boy from Brazil. Gina had spent the better part of year in an orphanage, and David never really knew anything but an orphanage; having been abandoned by his parents almost as a newborn. Those of you, who have adopted, will be able to identify with this; especially parents of kids who have suffered prior to being adopted.
An orphan has a glaze in their eyes…an emptiness that goes to their soul. We humans have an overwhelming need from the moment we are born. We need to feel love. We need to be wanted. With an orphan, they aren’t held, they aren’t nurtured. Our son had been left in a crib his entire life up to the point of his adoption. At 3, David could not walk, and could barely stand. After he was adopted, we were able to have his birth date changed by two years…making him just a year old because he was so developmentally challenged.
Sadly, this lack of love isn’t just confined to orphans like I described above. We have a whole country of orphans. Our malls and our schools are filled with them. They may even have a house to go to each night…they just don’t have a home to go to. Mom and dad may, or may not be there when they arrive. Worse yet, just because parents are there physically; doesn’t mean that they are there mentally.
We tell ourselves that this lack of love in homes is confined to the poor and uneducated in the hopes we can feel better about our own situation. We buy our kids stuff. We get them what all the other kids have, and we say to ourselves that this is love. We send them to great schools. We pay for their college. We buy them cars, I Pads, I-Phones, and computers. Yet sadly, we just don’t give them what they really want, or need…us.
My niece, Tina, whose mother passed away over a decade ago; wrote me after reading my blog from the other day, and said she would give up everything she had to be able to spend just one more day with her mother. At the end of the day, we all want what Tina wants. We want to be with people we love
The holidays are approaching and it offers all of us an opportunity to begin again with the people we love. Perhaps with our elderly parents, extended family, friends and neighbors, maybe we could go spend an afternoon with them instead of spending the afternoon in a mall buying them something? Maybe we could cut down on all the gifts we buy, so we can spend time with the people we love, instead on having to work harder to pay for the stuff when the bills come due? Maybe we could enjoy Thanksgiving without looking past it as we plan for Christmas? Maybe we can quit trying to have a perfect Norman Rockwell Christmas? Let’s just accept Aunt Sarah for just one day…warts and all.
We always say time is money, but you can always make more money…you only get so much time. Spend it wisely!
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