Didn't They Say Only Love will Win in the End

Kindness and love, they just might be everything.

Lately, my mind and heart are being opened to the fullness of kindness. Of what love may really mean. The thought of welcome still catches in my gut and steals my breath away. It's be free at its core. I keep tossing these questions around in my mind and my heart, the idea of welcome. The what if of welcome. What would it really mean if everyone was welcome, if we told everyone they were in? everyone. welcome. here. 

There's this new Mumford and Sons album out and there's this new song on it about loneliness and hunger and thirst, and that maybe love is the key. Maybe it's the answer. 

Can you just imagine? I've been imagining lately, and it is gloriously and incomprehensibly good. All people are invited and welcome and as obvious as that may sound, I am just imagining the sheer vastness of it. It screams safety and belonging, things all people so desire in the core of their souls. No one is outside the reach of the Love and Goodness and Grace and Peace or outside the Body of Christ. Everyone has a story and everyone is welcome. 

I read Isaiah 61 lately and I see it differently.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, 

because the Lord has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor;

he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and the opening of the prison to those who are bound

That all people everywhere and all the time and me and you are the ones. We're the brokenhearted, the captive, the blind, and the prisoners in need of being set free. The people in our midst, these are the ones to love. At the very beginning of his ministry, in Luke chapter 4, in a synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus unrolled the scroll and read just that. And I think that these words are just what Jesus came to do. Freedom, good news, healing, value. Divine Love.  

My mom and I went out this past week for an evening with Bryan Stevenson. I could talk about him for hours, his work is just so astounding to me. He's a human rights lawyer in Alabama who believes that every person is more than the worst thing they've done and that forgiveness is a necessary means to achieving equality for all. I am inspired by him and by what he believes. He believes in an identity of hope, mercy, grace, and courage. 

He works exclusively with our criminal justice system, with poverty and racial inequalities that exist there. And Bryan goes in our prisons and onto death row and helps free the poor, the innocent, the ones wrongly accused, the mentally unstable. He sits down with them and he hears them. Children and teenagers who have survived traumatic childhood experiences are on death row for crimes committed in moments of danger, coercion, vulnerability. They kill the abusive stepfather or participate in the gang initiation. And Bryan sits with them and he hears them. Some of these people are in tight spots and no one to speak for them. It's excruciatingly heartbreaking. Bryan Stevenson goes in and says YOU ARE MORE. He says, you are more.

I love this quote from his book Just Mercy. He writes, "whenever things got really bad and they were questioning the value of their lives, I would remind them that each one of us is is more than the worst thing we've ever done. I told them that if someone told a lie, that person is not a liar. If you take something that doesn't belong to you, you are not just a thief. Even if you kill someone, you're not just a killer. You are more than broken."

Mercy is just when it is rooted in hopefulness and freely given. Mercy is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving. The people who haven't earned it, who haven't sought it, are the most meaningful recipients of our compassion. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can't otherwise see; you hear things you can't otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each one of us. 

I know how broken and sad and afraid people can be. I know, me too. I know how fear can eat people alive. How the belief that they have become the worst thing they've done can turn people into the worse and lesser versions of themselves. People can shut you out so fast, just because they believe something untrue about themselves. It's so hard, isn't it? It hurts so bad, doesn't it? When people can't look you in the eye anymore or something is broken in how you used to operate. 

I am learning that there is this clear and present peace that exists within kindness. Kindness is power. It changes everything. There is this assurance within that there is a better way to treat people. There is a better way to respond. We have it ingrained in us to shun people who mistreat us, to turn our backs on those who are cruel, to return the favor to those who don't make us feel welcome. But I believe it is kindness that can save us. Love that saves us. Every time we choose to acknowledge the fear and sadness and believe that people are more, we set one another free. The people in our midst, they are more. 

Love, it's got to be the avenue through which we bless others. 

But if I'm honest, there's sometimes a dissenting voice that resides within me. A tiny part of me. She will squeak, but wait. could love and mercy and kindness really be this good??  Sometimes she'll yell louder that indifference is the answer. The difficult, fearful, broken, the insecure, the jerks, they need to be ignored. Just don't acknowledge those who you feel shouldn't be loved, the voices of Narrow-mindedness and Fear and Selfishness and Pride say. 

My lioness, though, she roars in response. It's what I call the brave and good and true, confident thoughts.  She will roar, "wait but no. I don't think that's it. I think it's kindness. I think being kind and showing love to people, I think that's it." She roars back deep in my core, WHY NOT. who is on the outside, isn't everyone in??

Love. It must be the avenue through which we bless others.

The way we invite others in, the way we treat others, the way we love and show grace.

Maybe Mumford and Sons have got it all right. Didn't they say only love will win in the end?