Do you know that God loves you?  In the deepest recesses of your being, in the places most broken within you, do you know that God loves you?

What does it feel like to be so certain of the love of God?  What does it mean to live in the knowledge that God loves you?  How do you find the hope and the faith and the trust to believe that God loves you, and how is it reflected in the every moment of your life?

Somehow, the saints knew.  Maybe they were the elected few, and the rest of us wander blindly on this faith walk always searching for the certainty that we are loved by God.  Always asking for a measure of proof, a million little Gideons every day putting out the fleece and not trusting when it is wet or dry, our battles not against armies and chariots but against the whispered fear of the enemy who convinces us we are not loved, will never be loved.

If I knew, if I really knew, that God loves me, I would not live this way.  But I don't know, so I continue to wander blindly, begging for favors and seeking signs and praying that someday I will know enough to know that God loves me.

You can tell me to look at the cross and know, but the great tragedy of the cross is that he died for love of me, and I still cannot accept his love of me.  And maybe I'm alone in this doubt, but somehow I think that if the whole church knew that He loves us our world would be a better place to live in...