The Goodness of God

Are you ever confused by what God allows to happen?  Events often seem to occur without plan or purpose. They catch us by surprise, take the wind out of our sails, and leave us wondering what just happened. The situation is magnified by the apparent inequity involved. Bad things too often happen to good people, and there are times when it seems that all the promises and assurances of scripture only work for others. The questions these events generate in our lives seem to have no answers, and we are reduced to asking our Heavenly Father that often spoken, but seldom answered question: Why? The common answers to that question never seem to satisfy our need for an explanation. Be patient and trust the Lord work well as long as the trial is not too significant, or the pain too great. Unfortunately, God doesn’t communicate to us His motive for doing what He does. It doesn’t help that we know from scripture that there are times when God chooses to allow difficulties in our lives. Ecclesiastes 7:13 says, “Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?”

There is one other absolute truth about our God that can help us deal with these trials. I was reminded recently of a scene in C. S. Lewis’ book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. One of the children in the land of Narnia was asking the beaver about Aslan, who is a picture of Christ in the story. Since Aslan (a lion) was the king of Narnia, and since he was so powerful, the question was asked “is he safe?”  “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Sometimes, as we’re dealing with our problems, I think that we forget that our God is good. He’s always good! That truth won’t remove the problem that we’re dealing with, but it should encourage us to trust Him even though we don’t understand why.

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