The voices around us
Words bring messages that can hurt or heal, cause fear or happiness. It’s truly amazing to look around and see all of the messages communicated during the course of a normal day. We see billboards, TV, radio, bumper stickers, social media, and even airplanes flying high with banners trailing behind! It represents many different people raising their voices and communicating different messages to us.
A weapon of love
We’re currently submerged in a culture of voices and so easily, those voices, even the negative ones, can seep into our daily lives. Whether you know this or not, your voice is a weapon. But you can choose to use it as a weapon that diminishes hate and instead brings hope. We exist to use our voice to bring hope, healing, and ultimately LOVE to the people we encounter. Every single person has a unique voice and unique opportunities to use it for good!
It’s the little things
Using your voice to bring a message of love into someone’s life is actually very simple. The encouraging note you leave on a co-worker’s desk or an invitation to join you for lunch, offering to bring someone dinner during a hard time or helping carry in your neighbor’s carload of groceries are simple actions that, in the right moment, will shout: “You are LOVED!”
Today, we encourage you to use your voice to communicate love to those around you, even if it means taking an extra minute in the midst of a busy day. Today, let’s resolve together to defeat the voices of shame, discouragement, and judgment with a loud and confident message of LOVE!
A verse to help you find your voice
And finally, to the readers who feel like you’ve yet to find your voice, let alone use it, we will leave you with this passage from the Bible that it will help:
1 Corinthians 13:1-7, 13
“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing. Love is patient and kind.
Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.”
