The pain of being God: to know that no one really loves you.

Oh, but we make a show of it all the time; we give you things: like money, kind words, and we work for you. But, we don’t really love you. We sing songs, we praise your name, we thank you all the time.

But, we still don’t really love you.

We tell each other and strangers about the manifold wonders of you, about all the nifty things you’ve done for us. But, we still don’t really love you.

We think you’re a really neat guy.

But we don’t really love you.

Because you’re God, we don’t really have much concern for you as a person. We care about you because you’re so neat to be around and you’re not a pain. Because you’re just so darn nice and kind and wonderful, “We will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever…”

But getting a kind word from us, getting to talk to us — it’s only because of what you do for us, not because we really feel concern for you as a person.

Who understands or cares about the pain of God — what it is to be surrounded by adoring throngs who adore because you’re a nice fellow, a comforting crutch, not because they really concern themselves about what you feel, what you care about — or even imagine they can, or should. Who cares about God’s feelings? Who ever sees God’s pain? Who hugs God because they feel compassion for the pain of being God, the intense loneliness, the empty, hollow, unrequited void.

Like the rich man who has every friend in the world.

Except none hear the ache.

Or care.

Or think about caring.

How can we love God, when all we can see is our own neediness, or our own hopes for aid? “Does Job fear God for nothing?”

To hold the hand of God, to listen to his heart, to feel his pain, to taste his joys, to long for his happiness — that is to love God. To want to be with God because he’s a person too — and having no ulterior motive in our being there — that is to care for him.

God needs love.

Do we care about God’s feelings?

Or only about ours?

Do we ever apply 1 Corinthians 13 to our relationship with God?

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

“Love never fails.”

How do we love people? Do we love people? Do we really care about them, or is it simply that we love them because they’re nice to us, or because they are, in some way, useful to us?

And if we really, genuinely do love someone — really care about their feelings and making them happy — to emptying ourselves and giving them our hearts and minds and saying, “Here, this is me, this is all I am — take me, let me be with you because I want to be with you, because I really care, not because it makes me feel good to be with you, not because I somehow think I’ll be viewed with more respect if I spend this time with you, not because I think if I love you, you’ll love me, or if I’m nice to you, you’ll have to be nice to me, or if I give you things, you’ll have to give me things, or if I accept you, you’ll have to accept me.”

If we ever do genuinely love someone — some human being — can we ever love God that way?

Do we really love God at all?

Does anyone?

Who feels the pain of God?

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