Goodness

I woke up thinking about the goodness of God. God is good. There is a song entitled: "God is good-He is good all the time."

There are certain basics of faith. These basics are fewer than I once believed. Two of them are:

God is.

God is good.

He is not good because I say He is good or because I believe He is good. He is not good because He answers prayers or I get what I want. (Generally, I do not get what I want, and further what I want rarely is good for me or for any one else for that matter either.)

He is good because His nature is good. He is Love because His nature is love.

If we believe that God is-that He is good, that He is love, that He has our highest and best interests at heart, then an infinite world of possibility opens up even if our circumstances are most dire.

I have always enjoyed Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story." Perhaps the rest of the story becomes evident after death.

If we do not believe that God is good. That loss is ours. Our belief does not not change the nature of God. God is not tinkerbelle. He does not depend on our claps in order to live.

God is good-all the time. All the time God is good. His nature does not change.

That is why the cross and Jesus stand at the center of history. Nice things do not always happen to good people. Yes, the goodness of God and the grace of God are demonstrated on the cross. Further, the goodness of God is also illustrated by the resurrection.

The cross also however demonstrates that God can make the greatest good even come out of the most terrible circumstances. Most of us see in the course of our life some pretty terrible circumstances. All the 12 apostles died violently, except John. If the cross was the destiny of Jesus, and martydom the destiny of the apostles, then what room do I have for complaint and what prospect do I as a follower of Christ have?

But God is good, any way. Not because I say he is good, not because good things happen, just simply because He is good. That is His essential nature.