Mostly What God Does: Reflections on Seeking and Finding His Love Everywhere

by Savannah Guthrie

Imagine it—God loving you. Seeing you, appreciating you, delighting in you. Knowing you, having compassion on you, healing you, forgiving you. See it, appreciate it, grasp it, hold on to it. Inhale deeply of his goodwill and attune yourself to evidence of his love. Look for it everywhere.

The only thing harder than believing that “mostly what God does is love you” is maintaining that belief.

I once heard a pastor say God is like a radio station that is always on, always transmitting. Whether we tune in is up to us. Whether we turn up the volume or leave it as background noise—again, our choice.

I can’t place God next to me, even in my imagination. Because there is no place that can contain him.

When time is short, lives are harried, minds are distracted, and our internal dialogues are burdened, we can say their names, trusting that God will take it from there.

Fear forgets that God is at hand and working things out for good.

If we feel shamed, threatened, or alienated, we may start avoiding God, closing our ears, creating distance. That is the opposite of what God is trying to accomplish with us.

When those feelings of guilt and accusation would begin to rise, I reminded myself of who God is: my rescuer and my friend. I went back to basics. Sometimes all the way back, reciting to myself the sweet, familiar words of the children’s hymn: “Jesus loves me, this I know.”

We cannot simultaneously believe in a loving God and believe that the same God would cause suffering in some calculated effort to teach even the most essential of lessons.

Comfortable is not where the action is. It is not where you will find out who you really are.

When we are “rooted and established in love” (Ephesians 3:17), we are fortified and better equipped to accept each other’s differences with grace.

Mostly what God does is love you. If we can believe this, really believe this, how different would we be? How different would our lives be? How different would our world be?