God, I love you, too...

In reading Ragman by Walter Wangerin, Jr., I have come across two passages that have made me stop. 

Stop. And think.

For fear of diminishing the profundity of his words, I am simply going to leave them here, comment-less. Receive from it what you will:

For you are wonderful beyond describing it. And yet you love me. And still you choose to notice me. And nonetheless, you bend your boundless being, your infinity, into space and time, into things and into history, to find me, to preserve my life. Abba, Abba, Father! How it is that you care for me?

I whisper, amazed that you should care to hear it; I whisper, astonished that it could make a difference to the Deity; I whisper here, now, the truth of my heart and the wholeness of my being:

I whisper, God, I love you, too.

~   ~   ~

You emptied yourself to enter the city, and though your coming may not make it good, it makes you cry, and there you are. In the oily streets, damp with rain and human sin, lit by a single light, I see your face reflected. O God, your incarnation's in the streets. I see the city, and I cannot help but see you.

And I love you.

They ask me, "Whom do you love?" And I tell them I love you. They ask, "But whom do you love?" I point to the city. They insist, "But whom do you love?"

And since they cannot see you for themselves, I do the next best thing: I tell them stories. I tell them a thousand stories, Lord. For the city is active, and you are acting in it, always; and activity's a story. I tell them about you by telling them the story.... Convince them of your love, O Lord....

Because I love you, and I love them too. But yours is the mightier love, and I wish they knew it. Oh! I wish they could laugh out loud for the knowledge of your love for them.

So I turn to you, here at the beginning: Give them eyes, bright God, to see you everywhere. They are the city: to see you in themselves! Give them ears, thou roll of thunder, and feeling for your presence - ...in the streets because you choose to love them.

...

Lesson for Today: I dont regret anything about my wedding day and how we did things... But I have to admit that this comes close to making me wish we had been a little bit more out of the box.