I love that God roots for the underdog. Throughout the Bible, He makes it clear that He sees the people who are invisible and that He cares more for the fatherless and marginalized and weak.

I love this because I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling invisible and fatherless, marginalized and weak. Most of my life was me wanting to convince myself and others that I wasn’t any of these things, but now I’m okay with being those things because it has helped me know that God still sees me and understands me and doesn’t just wish I would be a better person and fix my own problems.

I love that God is patient with me and forgiving, and that ultimately, He’s not just waiting for me to get my act together. Instead, He says “I’ll do it for you, and then I’ll teach you how to do it, just as long as you keep your eyes on Me.” I love that God doesn’t just leave me alone to my own devices and efforts. I’d be really lonely and depressed if that was the case.

I love that God makes all sorts of promises - and I love that He keeps them. I feel pretty confident that I will eventually fail myself (and others), and that other things I have historically relied upon will fail me too. I can’t put too much hope in athletics, for example (since the Thunder always get injured), or my career (because my conference talk proposals inevitably get rejected), or my ability to run (because I may not get that Boston qualifier this year, though I’ve been putting in a lot of hours and miles every week). But I love that God has told me that if I hope in Him, He won’t disappoint me. That’s a promise I hold onto when I feel disappointed.

God also promised me that He would make me into the person I’m supposed to be. I think this is comforting because I know I’m far from the person that I am supposed to be, and sometimes I get very worrisome about whether or not I’ll become that person. I often conclude that I need to work harder, harder than everyone else around me. The hard part, then, is that I start to carry around a heavy burden, feeling like I can’t afford to mess up and I need to be the best at everything, and always looking over my shoulder at my peers who just naturally excel at all of the things I try so hard to accomplish. But ultimately I realize I don’t have to subject myself to such misery. One thing I love about God is that I can trust that He will take care of all of that.

I love that God is somehow 100% truth and 100% grace. I think that matters. Truth meaning I’m not just believing in convenient lies and grace meaning that truth condemns me much of the time, but God intervenes and gives me ice cream instead. I was explaining to someone on Friday that, if judgment was based on the good or bad things I’ve done, I know I’ll go to hell - that would be the 100% truth. But because God is also 100% grace, I know He can give me heaven. I love that. The world doesn’t operate like that, and the principle of karma contradicts that, but that’s how God is.

I love that God has a perfect plan for my life, even when things sure seem chaotic and random and upsetting. Sometimes it does feel like God is disappointing me, but those are the times I need a bigger perspective or a reorientation of priorities. Sometimes I need to realize that the things I want so badly are also things that would end up destroying me. When I was at Amazon, I felt so badly that if I worked at Google, I’d be happy. Knowing what I do now, I don’t think I would have actually been very happy at all. I’m much happier that I got rejected from Google and ended up at Tune months later instead, because I still don’t have to be on-call, and I get to do front end development, and I get to interact with my coworkers specifically.

These are just a few things I love about God. I hope they help you understand why I think God is of supreme importance to me.