Throughout my life I’ve
heard about God in many ways….
…God created all this and now He just sits back and laughs
at us…
…God is the premier
comedian and the joke is on man…
…God, what God?
…God, followed by every
expletive anyone can imagine (not the good ones)…
…God is a loving Father, You can learn to trust him by
thinking of how your earthly father is…
…God is good all the
time, all the time God is good…
…God is a just and loving
God…
…God is so good, God is so good, God is so good; He’s so
good to me…
I‘ve found truth in some of them, but struggled
with most of them. As the Creator of something so
wonderful, why wouldn’t He be involved? If it gets broken,
why wouldn’t He want to help fix it? Just trying to
imagine the time, love and energy spent in creating
something like the universe, how could He sit back and
laugh?
Yes, God certainly has a sense of humor, look at
the beauty in creation and our ability to laugh. Isn’t
that part of it? But the joke isn’t on us; it is for us,
to give us great pleasure.
What God? You must be kidding.
The next one I will leave to the confines of sin. .
.
That God is a loving Father trips me up often. What
about those who never know an earthly father…or have one
that would give them a scorpion (beating, poison, rape)?
Good all the time…I have to learn on that one too;
by living through it and getting what I’m living outside
my simple human understanding…it takes time.
God is just and loving…the just part, I’ve always believed meant condemnation and I had that
one down to perfection in the core of my being…But over
the past couple of years something is changing. God is
working in me to show me that just for Him
isn’t condemnation as I’ve always believed, but His
revealing and helping weed out the things that make me
unpleasing to Him. He is teaching me that if I’m beautiful
to Him, the rest of His creation that is also pleasing to
Him will find me beautiful as well. Everything else is
just weeds. The weeding is painful, but the end result is
pretty spectacular.
God is so good…He has been truly good in ways I
could never imagine. The past year, in particular has been
very hard. I have faced physical illness and challenges
that will probably plague me throughout my remaining life
on this earth. He has used the pain to drive me to my
knees and cry to Him in ways I never have been able to
before. He has encircled me with the love of brothers and
sisters in Christ to show me familial love I’ve dreamed of
for years. He has used them to support me with the defense
of prayer I haven’t known since my grandmother left for
heaven 19 years ago. He has allowed me to be used to reach
out to my earthly family and be a bright spot of witness
to them in ways I’ve only dreamed could ever happen. I’ve
shared often with family and friends the opening line of
M. Scott Peck’s The
Road Less Traveled: “Life is hard, and then you die.”
But knowing that death to this “hard” life is the
beginning of no more pain, sorrow and eternity in the
presence of the Savior makes traveling this road a little
less weary.
Yes, God is so good, God is so good, God is so
good, He’s so good to me.