Me: I don’t know why I love You. I don’t know why I love You. I don’t know why I love You.

God: But I love you. Always treats me like a fool.

Me: [You] kick me when I’m down.

God. That’s your rule.

Me: I don't know why I love You.

God: But I love you. You never stop your cheating ways with another [god]. You laugh in my face.

Me: Lord how long must I be disgraced?

God: Because I love you. (sigh)

Me I don’t know why I love You. I don’t know.

God: You and me. (sigh)

Me: I don’t know why I love You.

God: But I love you. (sigh)

Me: You throw my heart down in the dirt. You make me crawl on this cold black earth! No I never, I never knew how much love could hurt!

God: Until I loved you! ‘Til I loved you! (sigh)

Me: I can’t stop, I can’t stop cryin’ can’t You see? Here I’m pleading on my knees! I’m on my knees! Won’t You help me, help me please!

God: Because I love you. How I love you. Sure enough!

Me: I don’t know.

God: You don’t know?

Me: ‘We’ don’t know nothing about it. Can’t do nothing about it. I don’t know, I don’t know.

God: Sure enough I love you.

Me: I don’t know. I don’t know.

God: You don’t know nothing about it? Nobody can do nothing about it?

Me: I don’t know. I don’t know…

The first time I heard “I don’t know why” by Stevie Wonder (what seems like a lifetime ago), I envisioned God pouring out His heart to the masses. His heart broken over how poorly He’d been treated. Yet, even through all the madness we create as people, He still, for some reason, loves us. When I hit my 30s, the perspective started to change and for a while, each time I heard that song, it was me giving Him a piece of my mind. More recently, the monologue has shifted to this dialogue.

I have doubts. I sometimes ask myself, how can I be sure. I’ve seen enough happen in my life to know that God exists. But I’m human, and there are moments when I try to rationalize it away. It is in those times that this dialogue happens. I ask God, why do I love You? I feel rejected. Betrayed. I feel abandoned. I feel ignored; dare I say unloved. I struggle with Him; sometimes it feels as if we argue it out daily.

Notice that the question isn’t “do I love You?” The question is “why?” For me, the fact that I love Him is a given. Looking over my life, I know no other way of being, and I don’t want to. Faith is not a rational endeavor, and maybe that is why I managed to cultivate it as a child. Faith is belief of things unseen. Even in those moments when I question everything I’ve ever known, question the act of loving a God who makes me angry, I still hear God say He loves me. I can ask, why me? Why now? Why this? Why that? “Because I love you.” And that is the answer that prevails. It defines all other answers.

If only people could give just that much to one another. If only it could be enough.