We are being tested. …as a country…as a world…as human beings. The value of life has again been brought harshly into focus through loss and through violence. But just as illness and hate and evil have always persisted, so too has the choice offered in every moment: to Love or not.

Love is an act of will. It is choosing the good of the other, over and above yourself. It is courageous and often difficult. It can be painful. It is transformative. It brings both death (to your ego) and life (to the other). And if it isn’t these things, then even if it may be good, it isn’t Love. Love is a choice…and it is the choice we need to make right now.

Where would we be now if Derek Chauvin had made a choice to Love George Floyd? What if Daniel Pantaleo had made the choice to Love Eric Garner? Suppose Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis, had made a choice to Love Ahmaud Arbery? George, Eric, and Ahmuad would be alive right now. There would be a little less hate…a little less evil.

What if right now, you and I make the decision to Love each other? What if we decide right now, wherever each of us are at this very moment, we commit to Loving the person across from us…and we commit to doing this every moment of the rest of our lives? What would the world look like then?

St. Therese of Lisieux wrote that “the smallest act of pure love is of more value…than all the other works together.” She also said that “Love can accomplish all things.  Things that are most impossible become easy where love is at work.”

No one has the cure for all the illness and evil in our world. No one knows the solution to the persistent injustices that afflict our societies. There is no magic wand or salvific balm that will fix our governments, or establish the right laws, or regenerate our cultures. There is no single answer. But there are 7.8 billion answers.

Each one of us, each human being, needs to commit to Love. Love above all else. We need to approach every moment, looking for the path of love in that situation. And when we find it…we need to have the strength and the courage to follow that path. Even when it is hard…especially when it is hard….we need to act so as to bring about good for the other person. It doesn’t matter if they deserve it. It doesn’t matter if we feel love for them. (In fact it probably matters more when we dislike them or hate them.) It is about choosing to willfully, deliberately, even against our own desires, to Love the person in front of us.

The uneasy, maybe fearful, police officer needs to choose Love when apprehending a suspect. The anxious, maybe weary, politician needs to choose Love when deciding how to vote on a bill. The righteous-filled protester needs to choose Love when demonstrating against an atrocity. The fractious and vilified president needs to choose Love when addressing the wounds of a country.

But beyond these big moments, we need to choose love even in the little moments, the day-to-day moments. When following behind a particularly slow driver, when waiting in line behind a chatty customer at the grocery store, when your colleague takes the credit for your idea, when your spouse lashes out at you for seemingly no reason, when your teenager is ungrateful for the things you do for them…in all these moments and all the others…we need to choose to Love that other person. Our response in every moment needs to be driven by Love.

And while we may be imperfect, and while we may fail as often as we succeed in these attempts to Love, we must never doubt how much better our world can be simply because of our trying to Love.

So while we hold the elections, work on the solutions, and make the transformations, let’s all recognize and declare in one voice that the core of the answer…from the smallest transgression to the most brutal inhumanity…is Love. It is as easy and as impossible as that: The choice…the act…of Love in every moment.