Creation, Love and Foresight of Sacrifice

I deeply, passionately believe that the specific reason that God created humanity was so that he could love us, not the other way around. Yes, the full understanding of God, his love, and the purpose he has given humanity will naturally result in mutual love and respect, but I think that the conception many Christians have of God wanting to be loved being the purpose for our creation is absolutely wrong. He did not create us so that we would give to him, but rather that he could give of himself to us and that this nature of love would be reflected and reciprocated by his creation.
In light of this, something else I have recently come to realize, to my utter astonishment and even confusion, is that when God created humanity, he knew we would hurt him. He knew that loving us would cost him dearly. He knew that humanity would bring sin into the world, and he knew that it would ultimately cost him his life to mend and restore the connection that sin severed between himself and us. He knew that even still many of us would not love him in return and that even those of us who have made that choice do not always fully love him because in truth, we do not always fully believe in him. By all rational standards, there is no way it would possibly be worth of to make such a sacrifice, and yet the Creator of the universe deemed it so.
This leaves me utterly dumbfounded. I cannot possibly understand such love, and even more so I cannot understand how such love could be so central to the nature of God. Honestly, I understand why people do not believe as I do. Heck, I understand why people don't believe in God at all. I understand the validity and agony of the question of evil, pain, and injustice in this world. If anything, these realizations I have made make this even harder and more confusing to come to terms with. But somehow, my God deemed it the greatest good that love would triumph in the midst of such a world, that power would be displayed through great pain, and that rather than stepping down in all his glory that the miraculous would be most meaningful and powerful when displayed through the lives of imperfect and weak human beings. And somehow, it is worth it to my Creator to suffer for and with those he had created. Of all the mysteries I have encountered, this is the deepest and hardest. But it is also what is most beautiful and makes life worth living.
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