Someone asked me recently if God suffers...
I'll never forget turning to be with our girl, our first child, for the first time. She was resting in the warming station. She had these immense coal-black eyes that would in a couple of hours turn cobalt, and in a couple of days would turn again into her signature color: undomesticated, pacific blue. I walked toward her, and she blinked, seemingly in slow motion, and when she did, it felt like my heart broke. I don't know how to explain it. I was in love. It was an overwhelming beauty that seemed to well up from some primal space within me. What can I say? I was exposed. I was vulnerable. Maybe my heart broke because I knew things could go horribly wrong, and if they did, if I lost this scrawny little, alien-eyed thing, my heart would be crushed.
And maybe the reason I sigh when I lean against the windswept limber pine, right below the tree line, gazing across the Rocky Mountain canyon, to snow-capped peaks is that the beauty is overwhelming. How can I describe it? I feel, in those moments, exposed. I feel vulnerable. Maybe I sigh because I know things could go horribly wrong, and if they were to do so, if I lost the beauty of the mountains, my heart would be crushed.
And maybe God, resting on the morning of the seventh day, watching the sunrises of a trillion galaxies, swept his gaze down upon the majestic land and waters of the earth, and then upon humanity and life. Maybe his heart broke at the overwhelming beauty. Maybe he reconsidered, for just a moment, why He was risking so much on love. How could we put this? Could we say, God may have felt exposed? Vulnerable? Maybe His heart broke because He knew things could go horribly wrong, and if they did, if He lost His creation, His children, His heart would be crushed.
Does God suffer? Yes, I think He does.