Question: "Mommy, do you love me more than my brother? Does God love me more than my brother?"

Follow-up question: "Doesn't God think my little brother is annoying?"

What to tell your child:

I have loved you and your brother from before you were born. I love you differently because you are different. Not more, not less.

God loves you both because God made you, to love you. God made different people to love in all sorts of different ways.

For adults:

When Christians talk about what makes us each so worthwhile, endowing each of us with rights and intrinsic value, we talk about being created in God's image. Each one of us has this image of God (or imago Dei).

We would not say that one of us is loved more or less than the other because all of us have the imago Dei. We were created so God could love us — and so God could be loved in return out of our free will. You may want to read and reflect on 1 John 4.

You may also want to think about Old Testament descriptions of how God knows us. Psalm 139 is good example. We are all so different from each other, and yet God knows each one of us intimately. And God loves each one of us intimately.

We never outgrow looking for assurance that God loves us more than others, but we are only assured that God loves us. And we are constantly challenged by the proclamations of Jesus that God loves even those (especially those!) whom society deems to be outcasts.