It has to be love

We do not realise that we need never fear to love too much, but rather not to love enough... Let us love frankly, loyally, generously as our Lord had loved us. 

I was looking for something else when I stumbled across these words from Janet Erskine Stuart, found and bookmarked well over a year ago. I don't know the context in which they were written, and I can't remember what exactly struck me about them then and made me think I'd want to revisit them, but these words seem so very right for now. In a world filled with ugliness and pain and injustice, and in a week in which yet more innocent people have been killed for no other reason than hatred, the call has to be to love. It has to be to love as Jesus loved, and as he taught us to love; to be, and to radiate the Love which I know and experience, fundamentally and primordially, and to which I have pledged my life. And in this my only fear must be not that my love be unreturned or unappreciated, but that I do not manage to love widely, strongly, deeply enough...

In a bruised, pain-filled world which seems to be falling apart, in situations filled with discord and unhappiness, love has to be the only thing which can heal and hold us together.