Where do you find love?

It was Easter weekend when hell ascended to earth.
As I write this the death toll continues to rise in Pakistan. They say the reason someone evil walked into a worship service and blew them up. Why? It was Christians celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
As I write this, Hartford Connecticut is still reeling from a Easter Egg hunt that went nuts. More than 1,000 attendees ignored instructions for the hunt, resulting in trampling, trauma, stolen eggs and broken Easter baskets. Children were placed in jeopardy by some crazed parents. Really.
And God’s tears drop like April rain.
In England, two arrests were made when a 7-year-old died while using a bouncy castle at an Easter Fair.
And God wonders what is his creation doing.
In Florida a security guard shot dead a 15-year-old boy who shot him with a BB gun.
And God gasps and shakes his mighty head.
Amidst this background, amidst the pain and the suffering of just one weekend, I ask what does love look like to you?
Wait, take a breath. Think it over. Love isn’t always that easy to recognize.
I submit that instead hate is quite easy to see, know, feel.
Hate is killing the innocent, whomever and wherever we see them. Hate is crushing others with words. Hate is seeing differences and despising them.
Hate is living by the rules, rules we created, not God. Hate is being sure we are right to the detriment of others.
Hate lives today in a world where differences are settled by bombs instead of discussion, where our own leaders would rather pick on spouses of candidates than tell us how they are going to lead.
But love? Love is hard to see, touch, hear, smell, absorb.
Love is different. Love borrows in instead of punching out. Love is what separates those who follow The Way from those who have lost their way. Love is not just never having to say you’re sorry, as one movie told me. Nah. Love is striving to never do anything that will make you have to say you’re sorry.
What does love look like?
It looks like healing people who are hurt. It looks like feeding people who are hungry. It looks like loving people who are shunned. It looks like defending people who are overwhelmed. It looks like friends sharing food together.
It looks like grieving over the loss of a friend. It looks like a conversation over a drink of cool water. It looks like helping the celebration at a wedding.
It looks like helping the lost find meaning in life.
It looks like a man, hanging from a tree, because the threat of death from the most powerful government on the face of the planet was not enough to subdue his love for those who were being taken advantage of.
If we truly seek love, what we’ll find at the end of a long, long narrow road is a door. Knocking on that door, I mean knocking like there is no tomorrow, knocking like we need to get in, not want to get in, knocking like our lives depend on it, will gain us entrance.
Opening that door that is our way into the kingdom of heaven, God’s kingdom, is a man that I can’t possibly describe, except, except He is love.
What does love look like?
Love looks like Jesus, Jesus with his friends, Jesus with the children, Jesus dancing, Jesus singing Psalms, Jesus healing, Jesus teaching, and yes, most certainly yes, Jesus on the cross.
Find love today, friends new and friends old. Find love. Find love before this ol’ world squishes the hate into you.
Ask Jesus to come to you. With him there is a loving future.
Without, there is no true love, and the world doesn’t look that good either.
Billy Turner is a pastor of the United Methodist denomination and a retired journalist.