You remember how I told you last week that anyone who tells you they’re happy all of the time is either lying or bonkers? Well today, after a weekend of celebrations and happiness on social media (my entire Facebook feed is full of rainbows!) the reality of what’s happening in other parts of the world left me reeling.

It felt like a tale of two contrasts. Love and hate. Delight and despair. New families joined together while others were torn apart.

It left me feeling more ponderous and thoughtful than usual. Our British government tell us that we’re targets. There is an increase in violence across Europe. It’s being labelled the “struggle of our generation.”

And while history probably won’t prove you and I to be victims of this fight, I got to thinking if and how we might be part of a solution.

“What the world needs now, is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”

Or so the song goes.

A couple of weeks ago it was my turn to do the preaching at church and I found myself in 1 John: “Let’s love one another, for love is from God … God is love.”

And this morning, as I was thinking about all of this stuff, I was reminded again of that statement. Sometimes it feels like we don’t know what to do, some days it can be really easy to get overwhelmed by the horrid stuff in this world but, if we can do nothing else, we can do love, right?

I mean, even when we’re having a bad day, we can do love.

And so today, as you get ready for a brand new week, I wanted to encourage you to do love, whatever that looks like in the context of who you come into contact with today.

Hug the people you care about. Smile at that random stranger on the street. Let her rabbit on about her weekend for an extra moment longer than you might ordinarily like to.

Do love. Because love wins 🙂