Goodness
Two or three weeks ago in church we sang a new song. It was one I had never heard.
It came at a time when I desperately needed a new outlook. For three years I had walked this health journey and kept my chin up. But, as I alluded in my last post, in this season the confidence and assurance and peace had come crashing down. I was angry. I was grieving. I was feeling very much as though I were walking through the ugliness of life.
There were layers to my story; layers that had accumulated over time and space. There were other stories intersecting with my own, friends and loved ones who were hurting and walking through their own valleys. As I walked with them, I grieved with them. We'd been through some very dark seasons, some very scary seasons. We were battle-weary. There were the regular stressors of life: the daily up and down of parenting, children struggling to become more than just children and working through the emotions and the upheavals that come with that transition. A husband who gives his heart and soul to his work and, in some seasons, comes home discouraged and hurting for his students. Family members in the hospital or struggling with their own hurt-filled chapters. Financial pressures from everyday things: broken cars, medical bills, regular expenses. And winter. Always winter.
As I stood in church on that Sunday, I was numb. Worn out. I had been angry and sad and resilient for so long that I'd run out of emotions. What has gone wrong? I wondered. And how do I find my way out of this? God, where ARE you?
Then came the words to the song,
I love Your voice
You have led me through the fire
In darkest nights
You are close like no other
I've known you as a father
I've known you as a friend
I have lived in the goodness of God
All my life you have been faithful.
All my life you have been so, so good.
With every breath that I am able
I will sing of the goodness of God.
I struggled to sing the words at first. To be honest, his goodness didn't feel like goodness at all. It felt like heartache and struggle and deep hurt. How could I sing of his goodness when it felt like life was crashing down around me?
I closed my eyes and let the words hang in the air over me. "You have led me through the fire, in darkest nights you are close like no other..." "All my life you have been faithful..."
I wondered for the first time whether I had the wrong idea of goodness. I thought of verses like Psalm 23:6, "Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." I had always struggled with the verse. Goodness doesn't follow us, in fact at times it feels more like trouble follows us. It seemed like wishful thinking on the part of the psalmist, an unrealistic hope that only good things would happen.
Or Jeremiah 29:11, "I know the plans I have for you, they are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you hope and a future." Yet the plans that have unfolded in my life, in every life I've known, have not been all good, all easy. How could he promise goodness?
He could, if goodness doesn't mean simply good things.
My mind wandered to my kids. What kind of mother would I be if I only allowed good things to happen to them? If I never disciplined them, never let them stumble on the sidewalk, never corrected them? If I sheltered them and kept them from every kind of harm or trouble? If "goodness" meant an absence of any kind of opposition or hardship? I think the body of evidence--both from the Bible and from the academic world-- support the idea that I'd be the worst kind of mother. I would ruin my kids. Instead, being a good mother means at times disciplining and correcting. It means walking beside my children as they face adversity and hardship. It means not leaving them alone in the difficulties, but not sheltering them from them either. I walk with them through the hard places, to teach them and comfort them.
And what if Micah, as a fourth grade teacher, never bothered to correct his students? What if they made mistakes in math, and he nodded and cheered, and didn't address the mistakes? If he neglected to teach them how to behave in public, never pushed them on tests, never did anything other than what was easiest for them and most comfortable? Obviously, he'd be a terrible teacher. It would be an absolute disservice to the kids to be taught in that kind of environment.
So why, if I understand so clearly that being a "good mom" and a "good teacher" means allowing some hardship and hurt, do I believe that a "good God" would be any different? Where did I come by the idea that he was only good if I was protected, sheltered, and spared from every kind of hardship?
No, that's not the goodness of God.
The goodness of God is something far greater, far more beautiful. The goodness of God is a God who never changes, who never wearies, who never slumbers or sleeps. It's this God who walks through the fire by my side. It's this God who wakes me each morning with new mercies, new opportunities. It's this God who gently corrects and disciplines me and doesn't leave me in the messiness of my wrong ideas and actions.
The goodness of God is the constant, the reason I face hardship and come through it refined. His goodness is the very reason I face hard things, but it's also his goodness that means I never face them alone. And I am never overcome by them.
That's the goodness of God.
And of that goodness, I find I can sing. In the face of the hurt. In the midst of the anger. In the very center of the confusion and the weariness and heaviness of it all. Because his goodness isn't some kind of deceit. It's not disappointed hope or misplaced trust. His goodness is a heart that has my very best, my very fullness, in mind. His goodness isn't absent just because I am hurting. In fact, it's more present than ever.
A good God doesn't keep us from hard things, because that's not ultimately for our good. But don't think, for one second, that he doesn't hurt with us. That he doesn't walk with us. That he doesn't intend to use the hurt for a purpose. Just like a good mother. Just like a good teacher. Just like a good God.
It came at a time when I desperately needed a new outlook. For three years I had walked this health journey and kept my chin up. But, as I alluded in my last post, in this season the confidence and assurance and peace had come crashing down. I was angry. I was grieving. I was feeling very much as though I were walking through the ugliness of life.
There were layers to my story; layers that had accumulated over time and space. There were other stories intersecting with my own, friends and loved ones who were hurting and walking through their own valleys. As I walked with them, I grieved with them. We'd been through some very dark seasons, some very scary seasons. We were battle-weary. There were the regular stressors of life: the daily up and down of parenting, children struggling to become more than just children and working through the emotions and the upheavals that come with that transition. A husband who gives his heart and soul to his work and, in some seasons, comes home discouraged and hurting for his students. Family members in the hospital or struggling with their own hurt-filled chapters. Financial pressures from everyday things: broken cars, medical bills, regular expenses. And winter. Always winter.
As I stood in church on that Sunday, I was numb. Worn out. I had been angry and sad and resilient for so long that I'd run out of emotions. What has gone wrong? I wondered. And how do I find my way out of this? God, where ARE you?
Then came the words to the song,
I love Your voice
You have led me through the fire
In darkest nights
You are close like no other
I've known you as a father
I've known you as a friend
I have lived in the goodness of God
All my life you have been faithful.
All my life you have been so, so good.
With every breath that I am able
I will sing of the goodness of God.
I struggled to sing the words at first. To be honest, his goodness didn't feel like goodness at all. It felt like heartache and struggle and deep hurt. How could I sing of his goodness when it felt like life was crashing down around me?
I closed my eyes and let the words hang in the air over me. "You have led me through the fire, in darkest nights you are close like no other..." "All my life you have been faithful..."
I wondered for the first time whether I had the wrong idea of goodness. I thought of verses like Psalm 23:6, "Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." I had always struggled with the verse. Goodness doesn't follow us, in fact at times it feels more like trouble follows us. It seemed like wishful thinking on the part of the psalmist, an unrealistic hope that only good things would happen.
Or Jeremiah 29:11, "I know the plans I have for you, they are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you hope and a future." Yet the plans that have unfolded in my life, in every life I've known, have not been all good, all easy. How could he promise goodness?
He could, if goodness doesn't mean simply good things.
My mind wandered to my kids. What kind of mother would I be if I only allowed good things to happen to them? If I never disciplined them, never let them stumble on the sidewalk, never corrected them? If I sheltered them and kept them from every kind of harm or trouble? If "goodness" meant an absence of any kind of opposition or hardship? I think the body of evidence--both from the Bible and from the academic world-- support the idea that I'd be the worst kind of mother. I would ruin my kids. Instead, being a good mother means at times disciplining and correcting. It means walking beside my children as they face adversity and hardship. It means not leaving them alone in the difficulties, but not sheltering them from them either. I walk with them through the hard places, to teach them and comfort them.
And what if Micah, as a fourth grade teacher, never bothered to correct his students? What if they made mistakes in math, and he nodded and cheered, and didn't address the mistakes? If he neglected to teach them how to behave in public, never pushed them on tests, never did anything other than what was easiest for them and most comfortable? Obviously, he'd be a terrible teacher. It would be an absolute disservice to the kids to be taught in that kind of environment.
So why, if I understand so clearly that being a "good mom" and a "good teacher" means allowing some hardship and hurt, do I believe that a "good God" would be any different? Where did I come by the idea that he was only good if I was protected, sheltered, and spared from every kind of hardship?
No, that's not the goodness of God.
The goodness of God is something far greater, far more beautiful. The goodness of God is a God who never changes, who never wearies, who never slumbers or sleeps. It's this God who walks through the fire by my side. It's this God who wakes me each morning with new mercies, new opportunities. It's this God who gently corrects and disciplines me and doesn't leave me in the messiness of my wrong ideas and actions.
The goodness of God is the constant, the reason I face hardship and come through it refined. His goodness is the very reason I face hard things, but it's also his goodness that means I never face them alone. And I am never overcome by them.
That's the goodness of God.
And of that goodness, I find I can sing. In the face of the hurt. In the midst of the anger. In the very center of the confusion and the weariness and heaviness of it all. Because his goodness isn't some kind of deceit. It's not disappointed hope or misplaced trust. His goodness is a heart that has my very best, my very fullness, in mind. His goodness isn't absent just because I am hurting. In fact, it's more present than ever.
A good God doesn't keep us from hard things, because that's not ultimately for our good. But don't think, for one second, that he doesn't hurt with us. That he doesn't walk with us. That he doesn't intend to use the hurt for a purpose. Just like a good mother. Just like a good teacher. Just like a good God.
