In The Color Purple Celie is frustrated because she has been trying all her life to do things which would win her God’s love. Her friend, Shug, tells her she has been looking at things all wrong. God is trying to please us by bestowing constant blessings upon us if we have the eyes to see — things a simple as a purple weed in a field. That is the message in St. John’s epistle. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that God loved us. Jesus used the image of God as father as an image of the love of God. Parents love their children first, before they do anything, simply because they are their children. We are children of God.
