“[We’ve] seen what evil can do. Evil never [gives] itself for anyone. It takes what it doesn’t own. Hold your head under the water. Evil dominates. Controls. Eradicates. Evil is a sniveling punk, and if you let it inside you, then you spew hatred, which is just another name for the poison we drink hoping it will hurt someone else.
But not love. Love rushes in where others won’t. Where the bullets are flying. It stands between. Pours out. Empties itself. It scours the wasteland, returns the pieces that were lost, and it never counts the cost. Love walks into hell, where I sit in chains, where the verdict is guilty, grabs you by the heart , and and says to the warden, ‘Me for him.’ We live in an angry evil world. Where stuff doesn’t always make sense. Where hope seems like something we did when we were kids and the love we cling to slips through our fingers like cold water… but nothing changes the fact that love heals the shattered places. It’s the only thing that can. It’s the only thing worth fighting for.” — Charles Martin, Send Down the Rain