Lines 1—3

Dennis's "The God Who Loves You" begins with a supposition: "It must be troubling for the god who loves you / To ponder how much happier you'd be today / Had you been able to glimpse your many futures." With this introduction, Dennis sets up the idea of human choices and consequences. Dennis is trying to get inside the mind of an unnamed god, who could be the biblical God, but who is nevertheless not clearly identified throughout the poem. Looking at things from this unnamed deity's perspective, Dennis imagines that the being is troubled by the choices that Dennis's readers—addressed directly through the word "you"—have made, which presumably are not the best ones they could have made.

Lines 4—6

Dennis continues imagining this god being distraught, saying that "It must be painful for him" to watch as you get home after a typical week, in...