Lately, my heart hurts. No, actually, it’s more than that. It aches for the innocent and longs for some peace. It tightens up a little inside when I think about how Our Father must feel looking down over His sons and daughters, the ones He has loved so very much.
There are a lot of things working against us these days, both personally and systematically. There is both fear and shame in all of our most vulnerable places -- our bodies, friendships, products, faiths and political ideologies. There are countless attacks on our appearances, decisions, intelligence, families, religions, technologies, governments and people. We've seen innocent life after innocent life been taken in a myriad of ways. Now, perhaps more than ever, an astounding amount of hurt is present within our world.
I can't save the world all on my own, and neither can you. So, I propose a challenge. It won’t fix your life in a few steps or by a certain day. It’s not a 28 day cleanse or anything like that, and it isn’t something with a goal you have to compare to others at the end of the trial. It won’t be easy and it’s not on a set schedule, but it’ll definitely be worth it.
Give the devil a run for his money. In the face of evil, the evil of the every day and the evil of the hundreds of lives taken this year – LOVE. Create. Laugh. Explore nature. Adventure. Meet new people. Try new foods. Travel. Make a story (the kind you most certainly want to tell after). Apologize. Eat the extra scoop of ice cream. Make amends. Buy the necklace you’ve been saving up for. Find compassion. Have a conversation about politics – and respect those with opposing views. Adopt the puppy and the kitty. Sing at the top of your lungs on the car ride home from work. Tell someone how you feel, even if you shake or cry or laugh at the awkward parts.
In the face of this unjust evil, continue to live. Live as if that evil has no place in your heart -- and don’t let it.
The devil wants fear, and lots of it. He wants us to blame – the gun, or the truck, the mental illness, or the law. He wants us to turn our backs on each other and find wrongful accountability in things like race, age, religion or education. He wants us to believe that differing opinions are inherently harmful. He wants us to fear both simultaneously stagnation and change. He wants to isolate and alienate us from one another through the most ridiculous of methods. He wants to confuse us until we believe his definition of our lives, our worlds, and ourselves.
Don’t let him.
It’s not a simple solution, not by any means. But you can make such a big difference in this world, and where it’s going. You can write a letter to your local lawmaker, you can pray for the victims of countless senseless attacks of terror, you can donate to local charities. Those are wonderful things to do, and they have a tremendous amount of impact. But you can also defy the odds and drive out those horrible statistics each and every day. You can beat out the evil every interaction at a time, no matter how large or how small. You can choose to actively love every brother and sister of Christ you meet. You can live without fear of the present and future, and you can live without shame of evil past.
Maybe my method will receive backlash, assuming I’m naïve and uneducated, or worse, misunderstood. But I’m not any of that. I know what I’m saying and what I’m not. I’m not asking you to be naïve in following this plan, just to live in love. I’m not proclaiming you should trust everyone and everything this world throws at you. In fact, don’t. There’s a lot of evil running around here from the fallen angel himself. I refuse to convince you there is only good out there (rainbows and butterflies and the such), because there certainly isn’t. But God? He’s bigger than all of this. And He wants us to love – without conditions. Just do your part and actively work to drive out those systematic methods that produce hate. Do what you can to watch over our brothers and sisters, to keep them safe and walk them home. Do not fall into the hate, but run from it with feet leaping off the ground due to the butterflies in your heart. It’s not a perfect plan, but if you work hard enough, I think He’ll take care of all the rest.
Just love and live. Live in grace and beauty and truth. Do not confuse evil with fear or shame, as easy as that blame is. Work on the common mission of humanity in every smile or wave or heart to heart you have. It’s true that hate can spread like wildfire, but what about love? I think I’d like to see us give that a try.
