I woke up and she was crying on the edge of her bed, her frosted hair wrapped in curlers, flailing wisps spidering across her ears, forehead, the nape of her neck. The window held a tin blue sheen, glossy and iridescent. Shadows flickered gently on the wall in a slow march. Somewhere down the street a car hissed before quieting seconds later.

I shifted on the cot and squinted my eyes, hoping that neither saw me. The curtains shifted narrowly, exposing a thin sliver of moon. Soon it would be morning. My grandfather sat up in bed, cupped her shoulder, and gently laid her down flat before tucking her in again. He did it with such ease and delicacy that I wondered if this had become a routine for him.

Glimpses of my grandfather’s love are everywhere, most often in his gentle patience. He combs her hair. Helps her to choose the clothes she wears. Whispers what to say in conversation when he thinks that none of us are looking. I’m amazed at the amount of time sacrificed to repetition and the enshrinement of past memories. But he loves her. So he does it.

I can’t imagine the amount of pain this causes him, as his wife vacillates between freedom and stubborn uncertainty. To move forward in life and watch powerlessly as she lags behind. To feel helpless to heal and to continue forward anyway.

Perhaps this is what we’re all called to do, though: to continue forward when things seem to be at their worst, to love “impossibly,” to embrace these feelings of helplessness knowing that it is only through our own Healer that the possibility of a remedy exists.

I think that Satan uses the feeling of helplessness as a snare to keep us from doing God’s work. War. Genocide. Hunger. Poverty. Sexual violence. Nuclear weapons. Terrorism. Homelessness. It’s enough to make us retreat indefinitely. But our God loves justice. And He promises to maintain and uphold it.

Justice and love are inextricably linked. He “works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed” because of His boundless love for us (Psalm 103:6). Love propels His justice, as it should ours. And before we can even think about doing more, we have to learn how to offer this love to our neighbors.

Our neighbor is more than just the family over the chain link fence. He is the migrant worker in Southern California, the terrorist in Palestine, the homeless woman under the overpass. Our neighbor is often broken and beaten, whether by American materialism or a totalitarian government. Our neighbor craves love, whether he knows it or not. And it is this kind of love that we must helplessly depend on God for—a love that is not viable for most of us without the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit emboldens us with an extraordinary love, one that propels us to “preach good news to the poor… bind up the brokenhearted… proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners” (Isaiah 61:1). More simply that that, this extraordinary love allows us forgiveness, grace, compassion, and reconciliation.

The demise of the human race is unstoppable, much like the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. But also similar is the fact that we can be there to ease the process, to learn how to give away the radical love that was given to us by Christ.

We love Him. So we do it.