When Hearts Begin to Fall

There’s a man across the sea who has never heard the sound of freedom ring—only in his dreams. I think about him sometimes when I wake to the comfort of my own home, where freedom feels like air: unseen, but taken for granted. Somewhere, he kneels on a dirt floor, praying for safety, for bread, for one more sunrise that doesn’t come with bombs or fear. And I wonder what it says about our world that someone can be so desperate for what I barely notice anymore.

Then there’s a lady dressed in black, standing beside a flag-covered casket as a line of Cadillacs passes by. Her husband, her child’s father, will not be coming home. The world keeps moving, scrolling, talking, buying—but her world has stopped. There is a kind of grief that sits deeper than words can reach, and she’s living it in real time. I think about her, too, because she represents a thousand others. Faces that never make the news. Hearts that never get their stories told.

Everywhere I look, hearts are beginning to fall. The weight of this world presses heavier each day. We see it in the eyes of the homeless man at the stoplight, in the trembling voice of a mother working three jobs, in the bitterness between neighbors who’ve forgotten how to listen. Our stability grows weak—not just in nations or economies, but in spirit. We’re divided by the very things that should unite us: our humanity, our longing for meaning, our hunger for love.

We’ve become a world that confuses noise with truth. We shout instead of pray, we scroll instead of care, we argue instead of understand. And yet, beneath all the chaos, there’s still something whispering—something sacred that refuses to die. I believe that whisper is Jesus.

Because as dark as this world can be, He’s still here. He’s still meeting needs when everything else falls apart. He still shows up in the hospital rooms, in the refugee camps, in the quiet corners of grief where no one else dares to go. He meets us where the tears fall hardest and the questions are loudest. He doesn’t promise to fix it all right now—but He promises not to leave us in it alone.

The world tells us to believe in ourselves, to chase success, to live “our truth.” But what happens when our truth is pain? When our strength runs out? When our world unravels and the things we believed in no longer hold? That’s when belief becomes more than a word—it becomes a lifeline.

If only we believe.

Those four words carry everything I’ve learned about surviving in a broken world. Because belief doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine—it means trusting that even when it’s not, God still is. Belief means standing in the rubble and whispering, “I still know You’re good.” It means finding hope not in headlines or governments or movements, but in a Savior who already conquered the worst of humanity’s darkness.

When I look around, I see suffering that doesn’t make sense, cruelty that defies reason, and despair that spreads faster than truth. But I also see quiet acts of love—the nurse who stays past her shift to hold a hand, the stranger who pays for a meal, the neighbor who checks in just to say, “You’re not alone.” These moments, small as they are, feel like glimpses of Jesus walking among us.

Because the truth is, the world may be broken beyond our ability to fix it—but not beyond His.

He meets the man across the sea with hope in his heart when freedom feels like a dream. He stands beside the grieving widow in the silence of her pain. He reaches into every dark alley, every war-torn street, every lonely heart, and reminds us that His kingdom still reigns, even when ours crumble.

We can’t stop every war. We can’t heal every loss. We can’t make sense of every tragedy. But we can believe. We can choose to see through eyes of faith instead of fear. We can love when the world tells us to hate. We can give when the world says to take. We can believe that Jesus lives—and because He lives, hope still breathes.

So yes, our hearts may begin to fall, and our stability may grow weak. But belief is what steadies us. Faith is what rebuilds us. Love is what saves us.

If only we believe.