Does he love us?

“Does Mister God love us truly?”

“Sure thing,” I said. “Mister God loves everything.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well then, why does he let things get hurt and dead?” Her voice sounded as if she felt she had betrayed a sacred trust, but the question has been thought and it had to be spoken.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “There’s a great many things about Mister God that we don’t know about.”

“Well then,” she continued, “if we don’t know many things about Mister God, how do we know he loves us?”

I could see that this was going to be one of those times, but thank goodness she didn’t expect an answer to her question, for she hurried on: “Them pollywogs, I could love them till I burst, but they wouldn’t know, would they? I’m million times bigger than they are and Mister God is million times bigger than me, so how do I know what Mister God does?”

She was silent for a little while. Later I thought that at this moment she was taking her last look at babyhood. Then she went on.

“Fynn, Mister God doesn’t love us.” She hesitated. “He doesn’t really, you know, only people can love. I love Bossy, but Bossy don’t love me. I love you, Fynn, and you love me, don’t you?”

I tightened my arm about her.

“You love me because you are people. I love Mister God truly, but he don’t love me.”

It sounded like a death knell. “Damn and blast,” I thought. “Why does this have to happen to people? Now she’s lost everything.” But I was wrong. She had got both feet planted firmly on the next stepping-stone.

“No,” she went on, “no, he don’t love me, not like you do, it’s different, it’s millions of times bigger.”

I must have made some movement or noise, for she levered herself upright and sat on her haunches and giggled. Then she launched herself at me and undid my little pang of hurt, cut out the useless spark of jealousy with the delicateness of a surgeon.

“Fynn, you can love better than any people that ever was, and so can I, can’t I? But Mister God is different. You see, Fynn, people can only love outside and can only kiss outside, but Mister God can love you right inside, and Mister God can kiss you right inside, so it’s different. Mister God ain’t like us; we are a little bit like Mister God, but not much yet.”

It seemed to me to reduce itself to the fact that we were like God because of some similarities, but God was not like us because of our differences. Her inner fires had refined her ideas, and like some alchemist she had turned lead into gold. Gone were all the human definitions of God, like Goodness, Mercy, Love, and Justice, for these were merely props to describe the indescribable.

“You see, Fynn, Mister God is different from us because he can finish things and we can’t. I can’t finish loving you because I shall be dead millions of years before I can finish, but Mister God can finish loving ou, and so it’s not the same kind of love, is it? Even Mister Jether’s love is not the same as Mister God’s because he only came here to make us remember.”

Mister God, This is Anna