How sickening, maddening, and heart wrenching to see the immense amount of hatred being played out in our world in life-altering and life-ending ways, especially in this last week with the shootings of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and the Dallas police officers. I pray and ask you to join me in prayer for their souls, for their families and friends, and for our world as we all try to digest what is unfolding in our day to day. With all that has transpired, I have been feeling so many emotions and asking so many questions in my heart and in conversation. So much heartache, so much sadness, so much confusion is stirring up within me and I imagine it’s been stirring in you too.

I would have to say, by and large, most of us hear pieces and parts of all of these events and draw final and ultimate conclusions without all the necessary information and definitely without an openness to understanding. Then we turn it into anger and hate and madness. We act out of rage and on the defense. We gather what we want from a headline or a video or an article or a photo and then we draw assumptions and conclusions that make sense within our own perspectives of life. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing or wrong, but it’s just that… our perspective, which is painted by the life and circumstances we’ve individually experienced and endured. We make a decision and we take a stand for something we feel strongly about – again, not necessarily a bad thing, except that for many of us, when anyone opposes us or any tiny piece of our overall belief system, we react in anger and outrage and completely shut off every possibility for conversation and understanding and most importantly love.

My heart aches for ALL those involved and touched by these events. My heart aches for those that were in the right and those that were in the wrong because ultimately the people on both sides of this equation are less whole than they were before and distressingly some are gone altogether. In effect, that means ALL of us are less whole than we were before because we are ALL affected in some way. We don’t always like to believe we are affected by other people’s decisions when the people involved are distant enough from us, but that is faulty thinking. We, as the human race, cannot be whole without all of us, and that means we are ALL affected by the actions of one another, indirectly or directly. We, my friends, are all in desperate need of love, selfless love for one another. My heart aches because evil has stolen another moment of our lives. My heart aches because we are all far more connected to one another than we ever allow ourselves to believe. Our world is in desperate need of love and that right there is at the very root of all these issues.

Somewhere in our brokenness, somewhere in our distorted viewpoints and inability to love perfectly and purely, we’ve all perverted what love looks like and that perversion continues to perpetuate itself in hatred and selfishness.

Although the answer is utterly and mind-blowingly complex, it’s also very simple if we can strip it all back to the right here and the right now. Love is the answer. If all we have is the right here and the right now, if instead of looking at a single moment in the future and looking instead at the very moment we are in, the simple truth is…. love is the answer. Love is the choice. Love will always send us in the right direction. Love when it’s hard, love when you are hurting, love in all things…a selfless, self-giving love. It’s a simple thought, still complex and difficult to do in our incredible humanity – particularly when we rightfully desire justice. And PLEASE do desire and act out for justice, but desire it and act out for it in love, not in hate. Desiring justice in hated and revenge only grows the problem. Seeking out our ideas of justice because of spite and hurt and hate will only multiple hate. Justice is good, oh so good, and even deserved, but seek out a pure and true kind of justice and do it in love.

Love is the only thing that can conquer all of the evil we keep encountering in this world. When we look at ourselves and the people next to us and we question what we can do to end this madness, there is something each one of us can do. You and I can replace the hate and anger in our hearts with love. Love the people you encounter. Because although an act of love can’t undo what’s already been done, the decision to love, the conscious and persistent effort to love instead of be indifferent or to hate does and will matter.

Each small act of love impacts another life, even if only for a second. Each second you and I can experience love, we are better humans for it. All of those seconds, when constantly being multiplied, add up to minutes, and hours, and days, and weeks, and years, and decades of more love. What if all of those small moments of the most simple form of love to another – maybe even as small as a smile – what if those moments planted a tiny seed in the heart of someone and that seed altered the rest of their life forever. Not because the smile changed it all, but because the smile connected a dot with a kind word or a hug or a shoulder to lean on or a heart to love intimately and all of those experiences of love added up to stomp out hate within a single heart. The saving of that single heart, essentially would be saving a life… in fact, it’d save multiple lives. The more love we can give and receive, the better condition our hearts will be in, and the more receptive we can be to this idea of loving each other… even complete strangers.

So I beg you to do as Mother Teresa directs… Do small things with great love.

With an open heart and open mind, I ask you to spare a few moments and listen to this beautiful (and unfortunately highly overlooked) song Chuck Wicks put on his debut album, Starting Now, in 2008. I ask you to spare a few moments and read the lyrics of the song Jason Sellers and Jason Patrick Matthews gifted to us. Read these words, hear this song and examine your own life, asking yourself how you can be a solution to this problem in your daily life. Ask yourself, what if we loved? What if I chose to love today, right now to those right in front of me, whoever they may be…

IF WE LOVED

The prisons are empty
The homeless have houses
Nobody’s hungry
Nobody’s poor
Nobody’s judged by their faith or their color
Nobody’s wrong in this world without war
We buried our swords
We don’t fight anymore

You can’t imagine all the mountains we’d move if we loved
If we loved a little harder
Yea, there’s no telling all the walls we’d break through
If we loved
If we loved a little harder

Nobody’s lonely, used, or neglected
Children are cherished from the day that they’re born
Even a stranger’s never a stranger
No bars on the windows
No locks on our doors
Cuz we open our doors
Not afraid anymore

You can’t imagine all the mountains we’d move if we loved
If we loved a little harder
Yea, there’s no telling all the walls we’d break through
If we loved
If we loved a little harder

Just think of how much better off we’d be
If we open up our hearts
If we believe

You can’t imagine all the mountains we’d move if we loved
If we loved a little harder
Yea, there’s no telling all the walls we’d break through
If we loved
If we loved a little harder
Ohhhhh
If we loved
If we loved
If we loved a little harder