SHOW UP, CHOOSE LOVE

 BY WALLACE CALEB BATES

As I sit here today, post-graduation, now a master's degree holder, I am thinking about all the free time I will have between now and the start of my doctoral program later this year.


Earlier today, I listened to Show Up Choose Love by TobyMac, a hit song that underscores the importance of leaving people better than we found them. Achieving this aim is a motivating factor in all that I do.


When I was younger, I remember my family telling an anxious little me that being friendly was the key to making friends. I worried about being lonely at school and in extracurricular activities.

Now, as a communication scholar, I find myself making friends all the time. Part of that has to do with those early lessons. As a person of faith, though, it is part of my divine calling.


As I have traveled this great country, from California to New York, Illinois to Oklahoma, Colorado to South Carolina, and countless places in between, I have noticed a commonality across regions: people who need someone to leave them better than they found them.


Whether in an airport lobby, on the corner of a street, in a drive-thru at a restaurant, no matter our occupation as doctors, lawyers, or educators, the difficulties of this life find us all. But as my faith teaches me in Galatians 6:2, "Carry one another's burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ."


So here we are, standing in a world that is hurting, hoping, and hungry for something real; a world that does not need more noise but more kindness and courage.


This is not a season to sit back and rest on our accomplishments. It is a season to rise up, speak life, and carry burdens that were never ours just because it is the right thing to do.


The time between now and the following degree is not empty; it is charged with opportunity, responsibility, and fire. If the world is aching, let us be the healers. If the world is divided, let us be the bridge. And if the world forgets how to love, let us show up, again and again, until it remembers.

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