Surely Goodness
10:04 AM
I just can't take grave stones. I can't handle when I see people posting pictures of tombstones on Facebook like it´s absolutely nothing. I accompanied my father-in-law to the grave the other day. I told him it´s one of my pet peeves. Everyone comes and happily chats with their family like it's a holiday (and sometimes it actually is, and yes I'm serious!). But me? No way. Death is the worst, the absolute ugliest thing I have ever seen...
Tragedy strikes, a young, innocent child dies of cancer. Why? What happened? How could God let something like that happen? Is God really good? An elderly man gets sick and they discover HIV, a whole family is diagnosed with a sickening disease for which there is no cure. But they were such a good family… They didn’t do anything wrong. What went haywire? Is God angry? Did he forget?
So I think to myself...many say God is good, according to HIS standards, but that doesn't necessarily mean He's going to do good for me, right? Or make my life favorable? Bestow blessings? Doubts flood our minds as we daily see the realities and difficulties of life. Why would a good God ___________? You can fill in the blank with your own pain, I'm sure.
When my husband died, I went through such intense pain, pain like I never even knew existed in life. It brought me to my breaking point where I began to question everything I'd ever believed. Where in the Bible does it say God is good, to me? I can accept that He may be good as in His own, lofty, "Godly kind of good to Himself kind-of-a-way", but good to me and my personal life?
I can recite and chant Romans 8:28- "All things work together for good to them who love God..." but many doubts enter into my mind… so maybe I don't love Him enough? Maybe I did something wrong? If so, God just tell me what I did! Maybe I do not love Him with all my heart and He simply cannot bless me? I mean, the Bible does say God is just, and as much as I hate it, I sin more than I ought.
Coming to my own confused conclusions one day, I simply stubbornly promised God just one thing: That if He never ever did anything good in my life again... I would still serve Him and love Him every day, because of Calvary. Recently, I was reading Psalm 23 with one of my girls. We got to the last verse and something stuck out to me. Perhaps I have read or quoted the Psalm hundreds of times before, but I had never seen this gold nugget of truth.
¨Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me....¨ When?!?! All the days of my life. Here. This life. He promises good here--- all the days of my life!
Life? This life? This crazy, insane life? This life full of unwanted tombstones, tragic deaths, hurt, confusion, abuse? This one in which at times we feel everything may be falling apart instead of falling into place? This pain? This heartbreak? This journey? Good? For me?
What a promise! Right here in one of the most well known Psalms ever we see it is true. Surely, certainly, you can count on it, truly, goodness shall follow you! And if I don't see His goodness... what then? Could it be His promise has failed? Could His Word not be true? Or could it be that we fail to SEE His goodness in our every-day lives? Could it be that our focus is not on what God would have us to focus?
I believe sometimes we focus too much on the tombstones in our lives. Now, I´m not minimizing grief. I believe there is a time for everything and consider myself a serious and expert griever. But when we focus on the tombstones in our lives, our vision for everything else becomes clouded. The tombstones prohibit us from seeing the goodness of God. But when we look for His goodness, we will find it. We will see that in one way or another, His goodness has been there all along. When we focus on God's goodness, the tombstones of our lives don't seem quite as threatening anymore.
Reading about the children of Israel, I see another promise, "that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end...." Deuteronomy 8:16 sounds an awful lot like Jeremiah 29:11, doesn't it? "Thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end..." in the Hebrew language, expected means a hope, or the thing that you long for in the end. That is a pretty serious promise from a very good God, if you ask me!
So today... just know, although you may be facing dark, troublesome storms… He's still working out His plan for YOUR good. It might seem like the bottom's falling out of your world, but He's there, carefully molding your life into His perfect story. He promises us good, ALL the days of our life. He promises, surely goodness will follow you. Will you look for His goodness today?
The photo I used for this post, was taken by Mrs. Rebecca Pattison. She and her husband Chris are missionaries to the Philippines. I thank God for like-minded friends who are using their lives to reach the world for Christ!
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