The buzzing crowd of flies about the cross (C.S. Lewis)

  God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them.  He creates the universe, already foreseeing – or should we say seeing? there are no tenses in God – the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath’s sake, hitched up.  If I may dare the biological image, God is host who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and take advantage of Him.  Herein is love.  This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.

--C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Image source:  El Greco, Crucificado (1610), Museo de Santa Cruz de Toledo,

 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crucificado,_de_El_Greco_(Museo_de_Santa_Cruz_de_Toledo).jpg