We see children killing children,
and the grip of handcuffs tighten until our hands turn blue
cutting off circulation, till nothing new can be made.
This is not a new era, this is not the end. This is the history of humanity.
Hate and loneliness and revenge and “justice” and a crazy, throbbing lust for violence.
It’s all shoved into one empty space: where love is lacking in the human heart.
So we dictate and legislate, we fight the war on evil with more laws,
But we know we’re bringing wide-ruled paper to a scissor fight.
This thing.
This thing that eats away at all of us:
Madness and chaos,
Anger and fear.
A disease we treat with drugs masking symptoms, but never healing at the core.
(Side effects include: no room in your mind to make your own decisions, loss of appetite, purpose, and freedom.)
Control.
It’s how to run the world when love is absent.
Decisions made in fear may seem safe but always produce bondage in the end.
So what is the answer?
Solutions may look like education or money or resources or science or politics or religion,
Yet with all these things in order, we can still stand by and watch our children get slaughtered.
And even if we being moral citizens, hate still resides in our hearts.
What if,
What if the cure was so simple,
Yet so radical, it took nothing but a short Story and a little bit of belief?
What if,
What if we told this story like it is what pushes air into our lungs, only to realize it is?
What if,
What if shooters
and crack whores
and angry preachers
and suicidal beauty queens
and rapists
and gamers
and bitter housewives
and abused homosexuals
and discontented 9-5’ers
and corrupt politicians
and bullied children
listened to this Story and what they heard was this:
“There is a love greater than you,
A love you can’t conjure up on your own.
A love that replaces your hate and your hurt,
that surgically removes your heart of stone.
A love that awakens and makes all things new,
A love that destroys every lie, and sings a ballad of truth.
A love that doesn’t stay in some other place and time,
But enters swiftly and rearranges everything inside.
A new heart, whole and soft and clean,
Full of love, fully redeemed.
This love can’t be bartered for, bought or controlled,
It can’t be manipulated, added to, or sold.
It’s 100% good and completely pure,
It is the only answer,
It is the only cure.
It’s yours if you want it, it’s yours if you let it in,
It’s grace that does so much more than take away sin.
It gives life in every sense of the word,
It’s unconditional, passionate, and even absurd.
It’s the only way to love, it’s the only way to be moral,
It’s perfect and free and available for all.
This love isn’t anonymous or floating on some other realm or plain,
This love has a face,
This love has a name.”
The Story told, the words enter the atmosphere, enter the ears,
Some will turn away in disgust,
Others will grasp cling to it like starving refugees.
And then, one at a time,
Like lanterns lit in a dark alley,
Love will replace hate.
How do you make the world good?
How do you save a broken society?
How does love overcome?
(This is the only way I know.)
brookelouvier.com 
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