Love Little

Unfair!
I scream with clenched teeth and fist in the air.
Unfair, that babies are being killed, that girls are kidnapped,
That fathers can’t find a living wage, that black men are discriminated on the side of the road.
Unfair! That husbands leave and children die
and terrorists live.

Don’t you know?
Haven’t you heard that a Kingdom is coming? A Kingdom
in which no one will cry and no one will die and no one will hurt another.
Don’t you know that we can’t go on this way, this way where only I matter
and nothing more? This way where Calvary love
is ignored?

I’m infuriated
at the state of humanity,
at the state of these people I link myself to by the reality of my existence
and I hate that we hate, and I wish it weren’t so,
and I fight! I fight because I desperately
want love to win.

But in that fight,
the night only gets darker,
hope only gets farther away and less certain and all the fire in my heart
feels like the flame of a fleeting match that is ousted by a
single breath.
gone

What can I do?
What can the rushing of Calvary love
into the bounds of my finite heart possibly do to change
the tragic trajectory on which we find ourselves, we humans
who have found countless ways to mar and disfigure the image of the one
righteous, holy God Who
formed us?

I fight,
But even on my optimistic days,
I know that I won’t end abortion, or rescue every ISIS enslaved girl,
I won’t repair every marriage, or rescue every trafficked child,
I won’t finally convince the world that we are all human,
made from the same dust by the same omniscient hands.
I won’t.

I’ll fail.
I’ll fail, because this fallen world is bigger than me.
It is bigger, and wider, and more depraved that even my imagination can fathom.
What difference can my weak and feeble hands and feet and voice possibly make?
My capabilities are too small to build the Kingdom.
So what?

Love little.
I hear Him call to me.
Love little.

Child, the flame of justice
Burns hard in your heart because
It is the essence of mine.
No, you cannot change the world, but it’s not yours to change.
Don’t let the breath of inequity quench your flame.
Love little.

You will not end abortion,
But kiss the faces I gave to you. Sing justice to those little ears.
You will not save every child,
But hold the hands of the one in front of you.
Wipe the tears of the one that no one else has seen.
Tell the mother who lost her boy that you can’t imagine a loss like that.
Write for the one who reads, listen to the one who needs.

I see your heart, Child.
I know the love of Calvary beats wildly in your chest,
Wanting to reach the ends of the earth with its message of hope and mercy and justice.
Channel that love into the hands and hearts of the ones you can touch.
Let none you meet leave with no knowledge of the love
With which you want to change the world.

Child, love little.
Not less, but little.
Love the ones that don’t advance your cause,
Love the ones that don’t enhance your image,
Love the ones that have no one else to champion them.

Love little,
Love the least.

The Kingdom will come,
and those you’ve loved,
the least who’ve come,
they’ll stand with kings.
and in that Kingdom,
they will never know
another injustice.

Love little.

You won’t change my world,
but you’ll change theirs.