The timeliness of the Black-Eyed Peas

I was driving home from work after a bad day. Looking out the window while sitting at the stoplight, there was a homeless man with a sign: “Even ugly people get hungry.” I dropped my eyes, hesistant to acknowledge suffering, then scrambled around my car to see if I had a spare water bottle or something I could give him. I had nothing.

Honk.

As I drove away, I scanned through the radio and stopped on a song from over 10 years ago by the Black Eyed Peas. It seemed a small situational irony at first, but it left me pondering long after arriving home.

Everyone probably remembers their breakout hit, “Where is the love?” from shortly after the War in Iraq began, but it was striking that the lyrics seem just as applicable to today’s chaos. Whether you look at ISIS, the Black/Blue/All Lives Matter movements, the horrors of Planned Parenthood selling baby body parts, the contemptable candidates we are stuck with for this election, or the plight of the Syrians; it seems we have yet to find the answer, haven’t we?

And yet, at the same time, the song contains the answer, invoking God’s guidances and stating that, “if you never know truth, then you never know love.”

So, “where’s the Love y’all? Where’s the Truth y’all?”

Sitting in the tabernacle. Waiting for you.

If we want to transform the world with love, we need to let Love transform us first.

Spend some time with the Eucharistic Jesus today.

Find an adoration chapel. Attend a daily Mass. Stop in your parish if it’s open and just sit in the presence of Christ. Leave all the negativity, all the bad, all the tragic at the foot of the Cross. Be angry at God; cry, if you need to. Let it out, and let His Love fill you instead.

If you are despairing at the state of the world right now, as most of us are, what are you waiting for?