4377. 'And he said to him, My lord knows that the children are tender' means truths which have not yet acquired Divine life. This is clear from the meaning of 'children' or sons as truths, dealt with in 489, 491, 533, 1147, 2623, 3373, and from the meaning of 'tender ones' as truths that are recent and so those which have acquired some life but not as yet genuine life, in this case Divine Life since the subject is the glorification of the Lord's Divine Natural. These matters can be illustrated by means of what happens to a person who is being regenerated, for the regeneration of man is a model of the glorification of the Lord. A person who is being regenerated passes through different phases, akin to those which follow birth - phases akin to infancy, childhood, adolescence or youth, and adult years. Indeed a person who is being regenerated is born anew. During the phase when he is an infant the truths he knows do indeed possess life, though not as yet spiritual life. At this stage they are merely general truths which lack particular and specific ones, yet to which good is being joined. That joining of truths to good is therefore purely exterior, not interior. A more interior joining together of them is effected step by step as he advances into the phases that follow infancy. It is the state belonging to this type of infancy that is meant by the reference to the children being tender and by what is said immediately after that - 'and the flocks and herds with me are suckling, and if the men overdrive them for one day, all the flocks will die'.

A company might have executives setting policy and strategy, engineers designing products, managers handling personnel and others handling various functions. They all do different things -- but if they're doing them with a shared underlying purpose, the company -- and the individuals in it -- will likely be successful. The Lord wants all human society to function in a similar way. We have different skills and individual loves, but if we all share a mutual love -- a love of serving others -- then society will function as one, will be a reflection of heaven and will be a good receptacle for the Lord's love. This can also happen within each of us, as we unify our talents and ideas around a central love. And in an abstract sense, it illustrates how a wide collection of varying ideas can be unified around a shared good intention. That is the kind of love pictured when “one” is used in the Bible, either as a specific number or in the sense of several people or objects “being one.” In more casual references -- when used to identify a specific person or object -- the meaning is relatively literal, and is connected to that person or object.