Love.

"Whom do you love?"
It's an important question--one that begs a much-needed answer from all of us.
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Here's mine: "I love my family, my friends, God, and everybody (that includes President Trump, Speaker Pelosi, the NRA, the Planned Parenthood folks, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, criminals... e v e r y b o d y)."
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Love, after all, cannot be selective. Affection, sure. Preference, certainly. But not love. For if we are selective in who we choose to love, we will start to make a spectrum on which we place people according to our feelings toward them--and this can be dangerous. We do not have to like everyone, but we must love them--we are called to love them--or else we will crumble apart.
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To love people is the Golden Rule, the epicenter of life and harmony as we know it. Without love we are nothing. We become disconnected and unfeeling. We put up fences and "keep out" signs where desired, then turn around and greet our "loved ones" with a wide smile and an open door.
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"Come, put up your feet, make yourself at home," we offer. But we leave everyone else on the other side of that tall barbed fence, wondering and stewing and harboring hate.
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And just as one cannot fight fire with fire, so one cannot fight hatred with more hatred. (This only produces hatred squared, hatred on top of hatred, which rises and grows until we lose ourselves to the blackness of bitterness.)
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But, for all my mortal speculations on the subject of love, nothing puts it better than the Bible, which boldly declares, "(1) If I speak in tongues of men or angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. (2) If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. (3) If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).
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Incredible. You can be an acclaimed musical artist, a top model, a lauded professor, a bestselling author, a famous pastor, a talented speaker--you can be anything, and you can be amazing, but if you do not have love--if you do not love--then you are nothing. You have nothing.
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Love, thus, is e v e r y t h i n g.
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Love brings water to the wasteland and sunshine to the storm. Love bridges the divide and settles the dispute, and it does not back down. It does not hesitate, hedge, hover, waver, or wait. Love gets right out in the thick of it, in the trickiness, and it gets right to work--tearing down walls, laying out welcome mats. Love says hello with a smile, holds the door, tips the hat, makes room for the lonely and embraces the outcast.
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So.
None of us deserve love.
All of us have been given love.
Love is important.
Love is necessary.
Love is everything.
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Now here's the make-or-break question you must answer for yourself:
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Whom do *you* love? 💚🍃

Human.

A human's a human.
A human's a human.
A human's a human.
And humans are important.
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No matter the clothing
No matter the car
No matter the appearance
No matter the annual income
No matter the job
No matter the reputation
No matter the gender
No matter the skin color
No matter the nationality
No matter the ethnicity
No matter the religion
No matter the background
No matter the political party
No matter the age
No matter the personality
No matter the anything.
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A human's a human.
(In the womb, in the hursing home, and everything in between.)
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Granted, humans don't always make the right choices.
But that does not diminish their importance.
Their value.
Their worth.
(And if we make it to,
We're making a mistake.)
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Every human's a human.
And every human was made by God.
And every human is infinitessimally important.
And we must do the best we can
To love every human
And to help every human
And to show every human just how valuable they are.
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For, after all,
We
Are human too.