I'm scared. As a college student I am scared that the world I am growing up in will not be salvageable. As a daughter, friend and sister, I worry about the safety of my loved ones as the numbers of mass shootings and terrorist attacks rise daily. As a human, I am scared that I am living in a society that has forgotten how to love. A world that has let hatred and malice over shadow the importance of reaching out to others. A culture that doesn't treat love as a force that can conquer all.

Truly, I'm terrified.

I wake up to new headlines, news reports and trending hashtags on twitter, all displaying the latest act of nonsensical violence. My phone vibrates with a group message warning about threats of possible shootings in my home town. I can't help but wonder when it will end. People are up in arms, so full of spite they can't see compromise.

I am not claiming that I can fix the problems myself, the violence, the hate, that is tearing our society apart. But, if we could all stop, for a moment and find our humanity, the common thread stringing us together, binding both our past and our now uncertain future, we would see it clearly.

A promise in the midst of chaos.

Love.

Love is downplayed in our culture. We use it so flippantly. We use it in passing, like it holds no weight. But, within all the ways we throw around the word, love itself is just as strong as ever.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (ESV)

"4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[a] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

I can't fix mass shooting. I don't have the answers about gun control. I can't stop terrorist. I can't stop situations that take a life too soon. But, hope isn't lost.

Albeit, you can't stop these things immediately, you can be a catalyst for change in our society. You as a single entity, a person standing alone can change how you react to what you hear on the news and in the media. Within your capability lies the answer to the hurt and the hate that is crippling our hometowns and cities.

You can choose to see more. When you look at other people you have a choice, you can see the surface or you can look at others in a way that reaches past their flaws and the differences you may have. You can look at them with love.

I challenge you to look at the negative headlines, the people you may hate, those who think, look, act, speak and believe differently than you and love them.

Love them with zeal, love them without holding back.

Truly, honestly, authentically love them, and I promise you will see change.

The headlines may still read the same but you will see them differently, you will see them through the eyes of compassion and wherever empathy goes, change is soon to follow.

So go love someone, anyone, everyone.

1 Corinthians 13:3 (ESV)

"So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."