It's raining today, raining steadily, gradually and inexorably melting away all the snow, exposing the beginnings of spring, offering a glimpse of the greatness to come, reminding us of the inexhaustibility of the created order, the possibility of possibility, the presence of form, and perhaps most importantly, the fact of purpose.  Do we really live in a blind universe, a universe with no reason to be here, no reason to exist other than, perhaps, that it is simply the best of all possible universes that could have existed?  If that is true, than we really have no explanation for why we are here other than that we are here, which, in truth, is no explanation at all (of course, in a world with no purpose, we cannot even speak of truth as truth, anyway).
     In the final hours of his life, Jesus, as his disciple John records it in the seventeenth chapter of his gospel account, spent a great deal of time praying and talking to God.  At one point he says, "Father [meaning God], I wish for my followers to see the glory which you have given me, for you loved me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24).
     With a few words, Jesus captures the heart of the issue.  Because love--God the Father's eternal love--existed before the world came to be, those of us who inhabit this world can know that we are here because someone--not a mere something and surely not an inchoate nothingness--wished for us to be here.  There is a reason, a reason beyond that we just happened to exist, that we are here.
     And that's really what God wants for us to know as we approach the denouement of the Lenten season:  he loves us.  God loves us.  God is why we are here.  God is why we have Jesus, God is why we have forgiveness, God is why we are human.
     And Jesus is why we know God.