God our Parent, Who is both mother and father to us, loves each of us as if we were an only child. That includes our children. As we experience the overwhelming love of our Heavenly Parent, we can believe that He cares for each of our children as if he or she were God's only child.
God rocks our souls in the cradle of Her tender arms.
God knows and calls each of us by name as He counts the stars and knows them each by name.
God hears our voice crying out as if ours was the only voice sobbing and searching for motherly comfort during the night.
As we hunt for our identity, slip, fall, bruise ourselves, stay down for the count, struggle to rise, God's strong arm encircles our shoulders with fatherly encouragement and challenge. God's motherly concern catches and holds our tears.
You grow to greatness, riding your Father's shoulders. You grow to compassion kneeling with Motherly concern to succor one of Her sparrows.
You are made in God's Image and Likeness, in complete individuality, whether you are white, black, brown, red, or yellow; Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew; believer, atheist,or agnostic; straight, gay, bisexual, or transgender. You are the jewels around your Parent God's neck! You, as Pope St. John Paul II said, are a thought of God, a heartbeat of God. You matter to God in your completely unique individuality, as a digger of ditches or a dreamer of dreams. No matter what the world says about you, no matter how others scorn or despise you, picture yourself a flaming, glorious jewel around your Heavenly Father's neck, a precious child He thinks of and worries about and battles for always.
Do we then love our God as an only child loves his parent? Do we see our God as our all and all because we hold His heart captured in our all too fickle hands? Do we realize that when we forget God's existence, we've dropped and broken that great vulnerable heart of Hers?
What terrifying love is this? A God Who loves you with the passion of a Mother fixated on you alone! A Father Who would stand in front of His house waiting forever in sun, rain, and snow for you to come home!
You are God's precious jewel. You are God's heartbeat and thought, loved like an only child. Remember this, and return to God, burrow down into the safety of God's arms. Come home. Stay home. And picture God in Jesus, dying on the cross for you. He would have died for you alone, if you were an only child.