Week 26: Unrequited

I've spent a lot of time thinking, for the past couple of years, in fact, about unrequited love and why it exists. I spent a large portion of time in unrequited love when I felt that love was yet still supported by God and wondered why He wanted this for me. I think there are a number of reasons for it that I won't explore now, but a passage of C.S. Lewis that I read from "The Problem of Pain" led me to an interesting idea that I'm toying with.
We are created in the image of God, and while God has everything, he chooses to love us, chooses to need us. And in return for the dedicated love of a being that is, was, and will be everything- all goodness and light- for the love that that being chooses to bestow on us, but does not have to, we give Him temporary promises, and turn to less fulfilling, less wild worldly loves. Most of the time, God's love for us is unrequited. It certainly always is unrequited if you required us to return the same magnitude and quality of love to him as he affords us. God, is the ultimate unrequited lover- one of his greatest (if not the greatest) qualities is that He can love those who do not love Him in return. Is it so shocking that we, made in His image, would have a small, albeit less pure, beautiful and grand, snippet of this characteristic? Unrequited love, although not culturally practical, and at least when it is not acting as an idol and taking on a sinful nature, is in reality, very Christ-like.
C.S. Lewis discusses us knowing the kind of extraordinary and divine love God provides is good for us so that we may know what love is and should be. Thus, a love that loves without requiring to be returned to persist is, therefore, good. Now, a relationship requires this kind of love from both people involved- being unrequited on one side would be detrimental. But the kind of love that possess the power to exist with a lack of reciprocation, is the kind that is required, and even more drastically, the kind we should make every effort to give to God, as it is what he so unselfishly, yet unnecessarily, gives to us.