When I was around 5 or 6-years old, I had an exercise book, well, those kind of activity books filled with colouring, crosswords and linking dots pages...
And there's one particular crossword which I remembered up to this day. It had a hippo picture on top of it and it asked me to search for the basic needs of living things.
So I asked my cousin about it, since I was still young and I don't even know science...
We all know the answers to those are air, water and food, right?
"Bathe. Every living thing needs to bathe...", my cousin answered aptly.
About a decade later, I no longer think that any human can live on just these things (including bathing) anymore. We all know that. As we all grow up and out into the world of adults, we realized that life is not just merely what we learn from primary school science.
It's us.
In our lives, we need so many other things to keep us alive, to keep us humane. Some may say that we need to have dreams, set goals for our future, motivate our hearts to redefine the impossibles. Some say we need our own set of skills, wisdom, our identity, so that we can face the world and live on with the rest.
I think, we all need love.
And no, I'm not a despo. I remembered a story about an experiment to test the importance of love in newborns' growth. They splited up two groups of infants, and provided them with the same nutrition and living conditions. What's different is one group gets a hug and a kiss to the cheek everyday, while the other group doesn't.
Turns out, after a few weeks, the infants without the regular hugs and kisses face stunt growth, while the other group lives healthily. The babies are then returned to their respective mothers before the babies lacking hugs and kisses become dwarfs...
But ultimately, we all need the love of God. The thing is, God loved us before we even were born. I don't know what you think about God, but He sent His one and only Son to earth just to die for us. If you find this hard to portray, just imagine this. It's just like you deciding to trade away your mother or father for someone's, perhaps even a stranger's mistake.
If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won't love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can't see? (1 John 4:20)
That's what keeps me going on everyday, knowing that God loves me, it became my need. Accepting the love of God is definitely a need for not just the human life we have right now, but also the eternal life God promised us in heaven.
So, what do you need today?
Eng Hoe signing off, singing out...