His Loving Arms

I wonder how often The Lord wins by default? How often is He the only thing left? When I was young and in junior high, we rated the guys around us. The lowest rating you could get something like this: “Like, NEVER! Not even if he was the last man on earth!” Not much chance with those odds, are there?

Sometimes, when there has been so much rejection in your life, The Lord seems to be all that is left. To a single brother or sister, “His arm is stretched out still.” has special meaning. The gospel teaches us about The Lords love for us and often offers hope. After many years of rejection by the opposite sex and the seemingly lack of concern by members, there seems to be little left for you but Him. And only Him.

As mortal beings, we have an innate ability to love others. We inherited this from our Heavenly Father and while we are on our sojourn here on earth we wish to develop this love to it's earthly capacity. For too many singles their love is never shared. It never brings forth fruit and it withers and seemingly dies. It is buried so deep it appears to not be there. It has never developed naturally so it stands out as odd because it is. The same way a grown man would look odd if he kept the arms of a baby boy, that same man looks odd to our emotional senses because he has not developed the way nature intended. His growth has literally been stunted. I have never seen a man, fully grown except for little boy arms but I have met men who have not learned how to love a woman.


In the medical arena doctors would study the causes of such an aberration as stunted growth arms. They would run diagnostic tests, take blood samples, delve into the newly opened land of DNA,
and they would have asked for grants, donations and the power to do research because no one deserved the stigma that came form such a physical deformity. They would do this because over one third of the population suffered from this abnormality and it had become an epidemic. (Kind of like being single in the church.) Money for donations would pour in from moved and concerned people. (Mostly concerned that it does not happen to them...)
But hey, money is money and it makes the world go around. Who cares anyway? Right? As long as we find a cure!


Such an obvious abnormality could not be ignored. It would never have been allowed to become so bad in the first place. At the first sign of trouble efforts would have been made to redirect the way things were going in an attempt to protect innocent children from having to grow up into this horrible creature. This monster. And it would be horrible. Imagine half the men you know walking around with the arms of a T-Rex!! He could not cover his mouth when he coughed, scratch his own chin or pick his nose. He would need someone else to do these simple things for him.

There are people masquerading as normal, healthy human beings out there, but they have short arms you cannot see. They never stretched them by working them and teaching them to trust, going so far out there and not being hurt. You see, they were hurt time and time again. They reached for something they wanted and got their hand slapped over and over, until they withdrew their hands and stopped reaching. And their ability to reach was stunted. They did not stop growing because of some natural disorder, but an unnatural one. One caused from toxicity. The poison from rejection. The abuses in their life brought about this emotional deformity. And it is obvious! But no doctor wishes to base his career hopes and dreams on finding a cure for such a malady. No one would establish charity drives or telethons to raise money for research into such a one as he. Ignored, his aberration is made worse, the underdevelopment undergoes mutation, and no longer is he someone you pity or show sorrow towards, rather now you scorn and ridicule. And it is completely socially acceptable to pass such shallow judgment on him. I wish I could tell you it was as simple as an issue of pride, ignorance or even fear. But the problem is as wide and varied as each snowflake that falls from the sky: Unique.

In the end, after sympathizing with the hunchback of Notre Dame, our emotionally mutated man has no recourse but to choose God or nothing as no one will love him. So God wins by default?
It is very tempting to judge and say that such a man would not have chosen God otherwise, therefore The Lord gave him these challenges in order to secure him a place in heaven. What a cop out that is. The truth lies in the very people who rejected him. “When saw we thee an hungered and fed thee naught? When saw we thee naked and clothed thee naught?” I tell you, by ignoring this mans pain and suffering, you have won no brownie points in heaven. The Lord won. But we always knew He would. He won the moment He broke the bands of death and pain and hell. He does not have to lay traps to catch and ensnare us. The idea that His loving arms are reaching out to us still is sometimes enough to make us simply run into them.