There is a groaning that no microphone can amplify, a cry that neither parliament nor pulpit has yet pacified — the cry for love, not the seductive counterfeit hawked in digital bazaars, but the unblemished, cruciform affection taught by Christ and exemplified in Scripture. In our age of hyper-connectivity, humanity is more emotionally fragmented than ever. Crowds gather at revivals, concerts, protests, and funerals — but hidden in the sea of faces are private floods of tears, yearning for a love that doesn’t vanish after touch or betray after trust. It is the paradox of our era: a multitude in motion, yet loveless in stillness.
From Lagos to Los Angeles, Port-au-Prince to Port Harcourt, the ache is universal. What passes for love today is often a transactional mirage, wrapped in lust, convenience, or performance. The biblical exhortation — “Love is patient, love is kind… it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud” (1 Corinthians 13:4) — has been truncated by cultures obsessed with instant gratification. People thirst for fidelity in a climate of flings. As Søren Kierkegaard once mused, “The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.” In losing the sacred shape of love, we are quietly hemorrhaging our humanity.
The church, the supposed custodian of divine affection, has itself become complicit in this emotional apostasy. Sermons often celebrate prosperity over purity, performance over presence. Yet, biblical love — agape — is neither a feeling nor formula. It is a ferocious commitment, a covenant that bleeds yet remains faithful. Jesus cried over Jerusalem not because of its architecture, but because of its rejection of love (Luke 13:34). Today’s tears in the crowd echo that same divine anguish. What we witness is a civilization collapsing under the weight of unfulfilled intimacy.
Even psychology is catching up with Scripture. Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving warns that modern man sees love not as an art to be mastered, but a passive experience — something that just “happens.” This laziness has consequences. Homes implode. Churches fracture. Nations burn. Because love — real love — requires death to self, which is a discipline that neither TikTok nor Tinder will teach. The marketplace has glamorized eros while crucifying agape. We are raising generations who know how to chase bodies but not keep hearts.
And yet, amid this chaos, a remnant still longs for truth — and weeps for it. These tears are not signs of weakness, but resistance. They are prayers in liquid form. They remind us of Augustine’s timeless confession: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” The tears in the crowd are prophetic. They rebuke shallow religion, condemn cultural decay, and plead for a return to holy affection. They are the protest of souls tired of being commodified, crying out to be consecrated.
In this sacred ache lies a call — not to romance as entertainment, but to covenant as worship. The crowd doesn’t just want love; it wants healing. It wants a love that washes feet, not just faces. A love that prays before it performs, that intercedes before it touches. This is the hour for prophets to rise, not with hollow tongues, but with hearts full of divine affection. Because until love — biblical love — returns to the center, the crowds will keep crying, and heaven will keep asking: “Where is your brother?” (Genesis 4:9).
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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