God did not make us to hate us.
God did not dream up the color yellow and craft the scientific art of making butter from milk and whimsically birth cumulus clouds just to . . . disdain a little girl who misunderstood the cosmic structure.
God did not count the hairs on our heads or the stars that would hang in the sky over billions of years just to resentfully accept desperate people begging to be spared from brutal torment.
I know this because maybe heaven isn’t a pit stop between Raleigh and LA, but heaven is all around us. Breaking in and barreling down walls and peeping up like dandelions in the asphalt. God would not be so creative and wily and beautiful all at the same time if God’s desire was punishment.
— Lizzie McManus-Dail, God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us, p. xi
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 14, 2025