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

by Savannah Guthrie

I’ve always felt believing in God isn’t really the hard part; believing he is good and actively engaged in our lives and the world in the face of so much pain—that is the hard part.

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.

This is our great commission: choose to believe in God’s love. Wrap yourself in it; let it warm you from the inside. Then go out into the world, and you do it too.

I’ve heard it said life can sometimes feel like you’re walking barefoot with God on a burning-hot sidewalk. I’m just saying that I don’t want to delve into why the sidewalk was hot, how it got that way, what its temperature was, how badly my feet were scalded. I just want to tell you how God carried me and healed me and what I learned from the experience. Okay? Okay.

The lesson I took away: remain humble, or God will humiliate you.

Love the Lord God. Love your neighbor. And love yourself. I’ve come full circle. I believe God truly intends us to love ourselves.

Humility is simply recognizing our need for God. Acknowledging our need, as opposed to telling ourselves we’re fully self-sufficient, leaves space for him. That space can and will be filled with his love for us. This love is how we begin to love ourselves—we see ourselves as God sees us. It is the foundation of a real, unshakable confidence.

How do we summon and maintain that feeling of being loved? It’s pretty simple. We don’t. Because it’s not a feeling; it’s a fact. To “remain in God’s love” is a frame of mind. We use our brains to remind our hearts. We may not be able to sustain the emotion of being loved by God, but we can remain in the knowledge of being loved by God.

Not easy for a Jewish girl raised to avert eyes when looking at a cross, (“He is not OUR savior” . . . “G-d does not take human form”

Faith. It is clarity and mystery all at once. Answers and questions simultaneously. Satisfaction alongside dissatisfaction, delight alongside despair. Divinity alongside humanity. Nothing pat, pedantic, or perfect, not in this life anyway.

I don’t know how people expect to feel loved and cherished by God when their earthly experiences are almost entirely made up of suffering.