Who He Says He Is

"Helen's life has been a graveyard of loss, a scrap yard of betrayal. But ask her any day what she knows, and she'll tell you, 'God is good. He loves me.' Her conviction about that hasn't come by toting up her days of wounds and wars, weighing them against her days of laughter and bounty, and seeing which tips the scale. Her belief has a different taproot: God is simply who He says He is, regardless of what her troubles might have tempted her to think or surmise. Helen stands in a venerable tradition. She is part of that great cloud of witnesses who, living by faith, refuse to reduce God to their own experience, to limit His love by the evidence of their own circumstances." ~Mark Buchanan from The Holy Wild (pp 78-9)

"I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness."
Jeremiah 31:3b,c