Humans are built to form emotional attachments. It’s what bonds mothers to their children, and keeps families together for half a century.
That old saying, someone only a mother could love? It’s truer than true. A mother will love, because the attachment is so strong not even a wicked child can shatter it.
Sometimes the attachment never happens, and that’s when trouble sets in. The mother never bonds with her baby, and she sees the child as a burden rather than a blessing. If a child doesn’t bond with an adult, we get Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). The child’s ability to interact properly with others is affected, creating issues such as learning difficulties and emotional problems throughout the child’s life.
One suggested treatment for small children with RAD is to establish a regular schedule to hold them.
We need to give the child a hug.
Is it possible for us to get SRAD? That’s Spiritual Reactive Attachment Disorder. Of course that’s not a real diagnosis, but it could be. We all know people who have the symptoms. They haven’t bonded with God, and they have trouble learning how he wants them to live. Some even rant and rave at God when they don’t get their way.
SRAD. Spiritual Reactive Attachment Disorder. How do we cure it?
God gives us a hug.
The big hug comes in John 3:16:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
How’s that for the Almighty Creator reaching out to us to give us that touch of his presence that we so desperately need?
Here are some more:
Ephesians 2:8 tells us:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”
Jeremiah 29:13 tells how we can hug him back:
“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”
Luke 1:37 encourages us:
“For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Mark 11:24 says how easy it is:
“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
John 15:9 gives us our finest example:
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.”
In 1 Peter 3:18-22 we find one of God’s historic hug highlights compared to the resurrection of Jesus:
“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.
“Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.”
When God hugs us, we become bonded to him. All he wants is for us to hug him back, and we do that through our praises to him.
Let’s have a hug fest, with us in the middle surrounded by the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Then we’ll really feel the love.
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