What can love do today?

Today’s message from the Daily Quaker (dailyquaker.com) – Be a prophet of joy appears below. I might substitute the word LOVE. For joy is easily thought of us as an emotion, and so to can be love. But many of us know that we Quakers, like many others, know that the word love is a verb. When it is appropriately and effectively animated – positive emotions flow. But the flow comes from the work, the respect, and the courage, to reach out in love to another. Here is what the Young Friends wrote in 1985:

Daily Quaker 4/16/2026

“We have often wondered whether there is anything Quakers today can say as one. After much struggle we have discovered that we can proclaim this: there is a living God at the centre of all, who is available to each of us as a Present Teacher at the very heart of our lives. We seek as people of God to be worthy vessels to deliver the Lord’s transforming word, to be prophets of joy who know from experience and can testify to the world, as George Fox did, ‘that the Lord God is at work in this thick night.’”

— Epistle from the 1985 World Gathering of Young Friends

Should I be approved in a new role, this message may be the cornerstone, or a cornerstone, of my prayer and work. As a retired social science professional who has studied many forms of perceived and misperceived differences, and many threats and many paths to trust and collaboration, I know I hear the call to us all to work together across the generations – not as our old selves, but as continually transforming selves interacting with other transforming selves, seeking a better life for all creation.  It can happen as we join in that which is universal.   Indeed, it seems to me, it must happen and it can happen.

Each of us perceives generational differences in our own unique ways and in ways that are similar to the groups we associate with online and in person.  I perceive these growing differences through the lenses of history, sociology, and various sub-disciplines of psychology.  To sum it up, there is more than meets the eye, the heart and the mind, for most of us. 

The key is love, love animating God’s call to us to love one another.  In this is not only hope, but perhaps our only hope.  Love shows how to transcend these differences.  Love works.  The Young Friends expressed it well in 1985 – it is up to all today to live into what these words mean and can mean as we transform with guidance from the Light and love guiding our actions.