If I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but do not have love, I am just a noisy gong or clanging cymbal. 
1 Corinthians 13:1

Oh you guys.
I have been thinking about what to write this week for awhile.
And in fact, because I’m a plan-ahead kind of gal, I often choose and even write these ahead of Friday.
But I couldn’t this week.
Not because a certain candidate won or lost, but because of what is happening all around us as a result.
This now goes bigger than politics.
So I’m going to take the time today to remind us all what is important.
We have a new president.
It’s done.
If you voted for him or not is irrelevant at this point.
What isn’t irrelevant is how we are reacting.
Both those who voted for and against him.
It’s not love.
You guys.
We are better than this.
We are UPLIFTERS.
You are my people.
We are committed to being something else in the world.
Committed to being lovers in a world of haters.

When a student goes to school and sees hateful language written on their locker, that is not love.
When someone is beat up or harassed or called racist for exercising their right to vote their own conscience, that is not love.
When people cheer as someone is hurt or shamed or demonized, that is not love.
When someone is beaten and left to die because of the color of their skin or because of who they love, that is not love.
No matter who you voted for on Tuesday, I hope you’ll agree that none of those are ok.
None of this is love.

You know what love is?
Love is patient. Love is kind.
Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on it’s own way.
It is not irritable or resentful.
It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in truth.

Look at that list.
Look at it.
Don’t just quickly scan it and remember how nice it is when you heard it at so and so’s wedding.
See I know these verses are so often chosen to be a part of weddings because they are lovely words of what it means to love each other.
But today – we need the reminder that this is how God loves us.
And this is how we are called to love each other.
Patiently.
Kindly.
Without rudeness or resentfulness.

And I am not saying this from a place of having it all figured out.
I don’t.
I’ll confess right now to doing these same things:
To making blanket assumptions about people who voted differently than me.
To putting up a wall with those who I think are wrong.
To insisting I’m right.
I’m guilty. But I’m not alone.
Right now I’m hearing a lot of clanging cymbals and banging gongs.
There’s a lot of eloquent speaking and intelligent words being spoken without love.
A lot.
A lot a lot.
Yelling how wrong you think someone is does not change the world.
Never has, never will.
Shaming someone for their opinions or beliefs doesn’t work either.
You know what does? Love.
Love in action. Out in the real world, face to face with people who aren’t just like you.
Not posting on facebook.
Love, as I’ve said before, is a verb.
Not a noun.
It’s not a thing you have but it something you do.

And how God loves is always and forever going out into the world and finding the ones who are hurting and excluded and forgotten and hated and gathering them in and loving them.
This is what we are called to do too.
We are called, as people who believe in a God who loves us no matter what, to extend that same grace and love to everyone else. Everyone who is not us.
Because if grace is for me, someone unworthy who keeps messing it up, then it has to be for everyone else unworthy who keeps messing it up.
This is how it works.
So stop posting.
Stop yelling.
Stop telling people why you’re right and they are wrong.
Love out loud.
Find someone different than you and love them.
Find someone who is scared and stand with them.
This is beyond politics.
Go out and love.
Because it is love that is powerful.
It is love that bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.

Only love.