Sometimes, I imagine God like an It Girl who walks into a clothing store and after looking at rows of stunning dresses, picks the one almost hidden at the back of a rack. While it is amongst the beauties, it does look worn out…from use, exposure to the elements, generally from being pushed aside, abused, trodden upon, overused or plain ignored. But when the It Girl looks at the dress, she doesn’t see the mangled mess it is; she sees instead the colour of the fabric beneath the fade and the delicate seams along the edges of the sleeves, her eyes cut through the dirt on the dress and spot the beautiful print struggling to breathe underneath the dust.

She’s in love…. even already knows the perfect place to wear this dress to.

So she takes the dress off the rack, she has got to have it! In her eyes, this dress is perfect! She gets to the till and the shop assistant spends a total of thirty solid minutes running through the list of all the faults of this dress. “It’s torn around the underarms, the back and the hem! The material is worn out and thin from overuse. No one likes it, it is a useless dress really!” The girl still wants the dress regardless. Now after that shop assistant’s tirade, can you believe that when the price is requested for, she still attempts to sell the dress at full price? The audacity! After you’ve run down the gamut of faults with your dress, you should be grateful anyone wants to buy it! Full price indeed! The cheek of her!

Now, full price for this dress is very very dear. One wonders why. Why is the price so high? Does the shop assistant see the same potential the Girl sees in the dress? Or, does she hike the price because the look in the Girl’s eyes suggests that she’d pay anything for the dress?

The shop assistant names her amount (an amount one considers hopeful at best, absolutely mad at worst). The It Girl doesn’t even haggle; she actually smiles as she brings out a wad of cash because she can’t risk losing this dress for anything. She pays cash for the dress, happily pays and flounces out of the shop, walking on 14 rays of sunshine and a dash of rainbow dust.

She runs home unable to believe her luck. She cannot wait to try her hand at putting this dress back together. She gets home and immediately gets to work. It takes a while though; she can’t get this done in a few days or even several weeks. You see sometimes, the fabric seems so sheer from abuse that it tears in bits and has to be stitched together again with a tiny lace needle. Other times, the seams return to gaping even after she has stayed up long nights, deliberating and delicately sewing them back together. She isn’t tired of this labour of love though. Amazingly every time she works on the dress she is smiling with a tenderness that belies the effort she is putting.

Finally after a long, long time of sewing, dusting, pressing and replacing, the old dress is restored to what it was originally made to be. The Girl pours herself into the dress one Friday evening and goes out to celebrate the dress; a reflection of her love, her labour and her life.

I was praying this morning and it really hit me, perhaps for the first time I really got the fact that God LIKES me.

It just seems so amazing to me that God actually knows me; He knows my secrets, He knows the things I really think of some people (even when I’m smiling outside), He knows how bad I can be…and He doesn’t judge me. Far more than that, He still loves me. Even more important than love in a weird way, is the fact that God likes me. Love is a funny one; your mum loves you because well, she’s your mum. Lol. Sure you’re awesome but as we say in Nigeria, “Monkey no fine but im mama like am.” By virtue of kinship we tend to love those we share familial bonds with.

But we might not always LIKE our siblings or even our parents. A weird thought, but a true one nevertheless.

So the fact that God actually LIKES me??! I like that. I am a weirdo and yet He chooses to show up every single time that I can make time for Him, He wants to talk to me, to get to know me. He gives me things He knows I need even before I realise I need them.

The other day Christiana was saying some really nice things about me and I said to her, “…you’re just saying that because you’re not around me a lot more! Trust me, I can be petty, irritable and mean.” And she just said, “I know. I still rock with you.”

I think that’s exactly it with God and us. We don’t need to be perfect for anyone, not ourselves, not the people around us, and least of all not for God. That’s a fact I’m really trying to learn. We are lacking in all these ways but God would still do ANYTHING to have each of us saved. Sometimes, like with Sir Job, saving means testing us or even taking from us but eventually, even the things that have the potential to kill us, those things that the devil purposes for our destruction, are used by God to train us and build us….all so that we develop character that is not only strong and saved, but able to help Him save others.

And I just kept thinking this morning, that for a God that would give up anything for me, I am all He asks for in return. He wants me. Not the ‘me’ I show everyone, He knows and wants the real me, which in my case only comes out when I’m hungry and/or sleep-deprived. Make of that what you will. Lol. But it’s weird to think that we are all He wants; just us, flaws and failures and faults included.

I’m fascinated by how little it takes to make God happy.

The things that we think He wants us to do for Him; live righteously, avoid sin etc…are really for our own safety. When you think about it, God really has nothing to gain from your being good or bad…there are over six billion others to worry about. Yet, He so desperately cares for each one of us.

In fact, we are all He thinks about.

Crazy.