There are days (and weeks and months and years…) that life is one heartache after another.
That just kind of comes with the territory living on a broken planet among broken people being broken ourselves. Things don’t go right very often.
And it hurts.
It hurts me.
It hurts you.
It hurts everyone around us.
And sometimes talking to the Lord about all this helps.
But sometimes it doesn’t.
And sometimes reading scriptures about comfort and love and peace and joy and hope, all of which He wants to provide us, helps.
But sometimes it doesn’t.
On the days the brokenness inside me refuses to be comforted, about all I can do is decide to mentally assent to two things:
You are good, and all You do is good…
Psalm 119:68
This is the foundation of my worldview that I have to return to when I am stumbling.
God is good (and loving and kind and for me and attentive and trustworthy). God is good. He doesn’t just act in good ways; He embodies goodness.
And all God does is good (whether He is passively allowing things to unfold or actively causing things to happen). God is in total control of everything every second, and because He is good – that is, there is no badness in Him – He cannot act in a single bad way. Not ever. Even when He allows bad things to happen – evil things, horrid things – He only does so that we might come closer to His heart, the very best place for us to be.
Broken people on a broken planet watch the madness, feel the sadness, and are all but overwhelmed. Our feelings tell us, even those of us who know Jesus, there is no hope.
And, truth be told, sometimes we can read scripture and pray until we are blue in the face, and we will still feel hopeless. Reading, “You are good, and all You do is good…” may not alleviate the pain.
But I think just telling God we believe those things to be true does two things.
It shows Him we trust Him even if we don’t feel happy about it. And I have to believe He likes to be trusted.
But it also shows us we trust Him even if we don’t feel happy about it. And, especially when we’re despairing, we need all the help we can get reminding ourselves we do, in fact, trust God. It forces us to think about why He is trustworthy. And if we want feelings of hopelessness to lift, it seems to me sowing seeds of His trustworthiness is a good place to start.
It is a good place to start indeed. This is not unlike the “remembering” the Scriptures calls us to. We need to remember how God has demonstrated His goodness and trustworthiness. We tend to forget in the midst of pain.
Our Lord God is Sovereign, His Majesty doesn’t change to suit our circumstances. He is God when we cry and when we rejoice. He is God when life is hard and when life is breezing through. He is God when we are in the pit and He is God when we are the CEO. God is God and will always be God. We have no right to question what he does and why he does it. What right does the creation have to ask the Creator why He made us a certain way or why bad things happen to good people. The moment we question God, our faith ceases to work. Yes, He loves us, he is our friend and companion but at the same time He is still God. He is El Elyon, The Most High God. Yes we love Him but we must also fear Him. Never ask God why He does what He does.