A Deeper Shade Of Hope

Our purpose in this life is to become like God. Perhaps one of the more difficult aspects of God's existence is having to be separated spiritually from His beloved children. He loves us and knows us down to our individual cells and atoms and He always wants what is best for us, but we don't always choose what's best. Others also don't always choose what's best. So we spend a lot of time turned away from God, either through mistakes and choices of our own making, or because we get lost and confused in the haze of pain and heartbreak that comes from living in a fallen world. As painful as it is for us to be cut off from God at these times, it is much more painful for God who loves us a lot more purely and intensely than we could possibly imagine. That's why I believe we are asked to learn what it's like to mourn, to lose something precious. These are invaluable experiences to becoming like God and learning to think like He thinks. To be God is to mourn the absence of your children constantly. But with that mourning comes a deeper shade of hope. God doesn't give up on us because He loves us and He has that hope that we will eventually figure this out and we will choose to return to His side to go no more out. But until that day, there is a lot of sorrow mingled with God's love and I believe that is why we are asked to love and to lose, at least for a time, so that we may become a little more like God.