This is an excerpt from a book I’m currently reading called Gilead, which recently won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It’s a wonderfully written book and I highly recommend it to anyone. I find there are quite a few sections that cause me to pause, reread and reflect. Here is one particular excerpt that I have been mulling over for the past couple of weeks:

“[John] Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists of our behavior, and the reaction of God to us might be thought of as aesthetic rather than morally judgmental in the ordinary sense. How well do we understand our role? With how much assurance do we perform it?…I do like Calvin’s image, though, because it suggest how God might actually enjoy us. I believe we think about that far too little. It would be a way into understanding essential things, since presumably the world exists for God’s enjoyment, not in any simple sense, but as you enjoy the being of a child even when he is in every way a thorn in your heart”(Robinson, Marilynne. Gilead. p. 124-125).