Love Is the Only Answer (04/21/2024)

Crime, corruption, war, hate speech, demonstrations, partisan politics, ethnic hatred fill the news channels and daily news feed cycles. Watching, even if for a short period, could fill one with a sense of great angst and doom. It should be concerning to us, but it should also be a call to be part of Christ’s ongoing salvific mission here on earth. As we see what’s wrong with our world, let us be people who respond by bringing what is right and good and loving because of our LORD’s presence among us and within us to the world daily.

It's unfortunate that the news channels don’t seek out footage of loving kindness. It is there. It is happening daily around us, to us, through us. As disciples of Christ, we know that we are called to love one another as He has loved us. That love isn’t the fluffy love of Hallmark cards or Hollywood. That love is the love that expresses itself daily, moment to moment through the life and actions of our sisters and brothers who know to their core the LORD, the LORD’s love for all of us, and who have realized the only response that is acceptable is love.

Yesterday I was blessed to witness a group of women providing a luncheon for a grieving community of family and friends. Women brought food to share, rolled up their sleeves and served and stayed to do the dishes. This was intentional. This was the loving response of a community to the suffering of one of their own.

This week I blessed to receive a card from a woman thanking me for my efforts in the community. She didn’t have to do that. But her loving kindness, her thoughtfulness, her giving of her time and energy to affirm me on my journey matters. Her loving kindness is forever in my bank of moments that mattered.

This week I witnessed nearly 20 adults spend hours of their precious time to with youth handing on the faith, speaking of their own faith journeys, encouraging the youth on their individual journeys. They weren’t required to do that by an institution or earthly power but rather chose to do that because this loving response was the one that made the most sense at this time. They felt called by Christ to love Christ as well as others through this activity.  

This week, as I waited for my scans at the local hospital, I witnessed a woman helping another cope with the challenges. Eavesdropping happens in life, I could hear her encouraging words, I could see her helping the other with the questionnaire, I could see her concerned encouragement when the other was taken away for tests.

Love is the only answer that makes any sense. It is what Jesus calls us to do daily. Daily we are called to love the LORD with our whole being and from that relationship our worldview is changed. From that relationship, love of the other is the only answer that makes sense. And we are called to be agents of that love, instruments of that love daily.

And for encouragement, I invite us all to look around. There are expressions of that love around us daily, if we will just take the time to look. You won’t find it on the evening news, but you can still find it. Perhaps it's as close as we are to ourselves – perhaps its that urge within that calls us to love others as Christ has loved us.  

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.