James K. A. Smith on Friendship with God

Smith writes,

To aspire to friendship with God, however, is an ambition for something you could never lose. It is to get attention from someone who sees you and knows you and will never stop loving you. It short, it's the opposite of fickle human attention, which is temporal and temperamental. God's attention is not predicated on your performance. You don't have to catch God's notice with your display. He's not a father you have to shock in order to jar his attention away from the game, crying out, "Look at me! Look at me!" God's attention is a place where you can find rest and where, "in the father's lap," as Augustine later puts it, you don't have to be worried about getting attention from anyone else. You can rest.

On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2019. p. 88-9