{Be Real} When It’s Not Good…He Is

It was 5 years ago, but I remember the moment like it was yesterday. I was sitting on a friend’s bed at college, sitting with my best friend and talking through tears. “I just don’t understand.”

A week before, I had been to Haiti with my church, and came home shocked by all the suffering and the joy I had seen, shaken by my first experience in a third-world country. 24 hours after our plane touched down on US soil, an 8.0 magnitude earthquake hit Port-au-Prince, demolished streets and homes and lives exactly where we had walked. It was traumatic, and it left my spirit asking questions.

The biggest question my soul wrestled with then, is the question we all wrestle with, hard, at times of suffering in our own lives.

God, HOW are you good?

When we suffer, something switches inside of us and we become the judges of God’s goodness. We demand answers. Our head may “know” he is good, but suddenly, our hearts are not so sure.

Back in 2010, I wanted to understand how this trauma could happen to people who were already suffering so much. How can people without food and water and one pair of clothes on their back, suddenly lose everything or even their lives? How could my good God let that happen? I knew His eyes saw their suffering, even more than mine had.

My friend gently reminded me that when Jesus came, he walked and healed person by person – and preventing all suffering is not in His plan for now. The full and complete redemption we want here and now is meant for eternity.

But it’s hard to see when you’re in the thick and the dark and you just want an answer.

It’s hard to see that suffering isn’t an indication of a God who is not good, but a world that is not good; a world that is broken, imperfect, fractured.

And God’s goodness, most times, doesn’t come to us big and loud and sweep through our circumstances…it comes small.

God always chooses to come small and close. It’s how He sent Jesus to this earth to redeem us – humbly and intimately.

God comes up close to us in our suffering. To BE our only goodness that remains at a time where nothing else seems good.

The closer our suffering is to us, the harder it is to understand. I don’t know, sweet sister, the suffering you have gone through or will go through while you’re on this earth. And I wish I could take it all away. But one thing I know: we will all go through it, none of us are immune.

There will be disappointments and failures, accidents and sicknesses, we lose people close to us – things we don’t know how to bear.

But all of these things are not the barometers for how good God is.

Here’s the thing we know all too well: blaming never heals. It may relieve temporary anger, or frustration, but it never brings healing. It doesn’t patch together the broken pieces of our heart.

Drawing near to the source of goodness, hope, and unfailing love…is what heals.

Coming up close to a God we can’t fully understand, to a God we can choose to trust even in our pain…that is what heals.

We can be confident that the Lord is ever near to us.

“The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,
And His ears are open to their cry…
The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart,
And saves such as have a contrite spirit.”

-Psalm 34:15,18

Even in your pain – and especially in your pain- His goodness will come to you.

His goodness will come to you in a new way, like a breath of cool wind on a hot sticky summer afternoon.  His goodness will come like a soft hand reaching out to you in the dark.

We can rest assuredly of this, for His word promises us,

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.”

– Romans 8:28

I have read this verse so many times, but missed this key part. God doesn’t say that for those who love God everything will be good. God says that in everything, He will work it into good, even when it’s not. That working into Good is God’s work, and we can rest in Him while He does it.

I read a blog this year by Ann Voskamp, where she asked the question we fail to ask ourselves: What is really “good?” She answered, “good” is that which gives God the most glory.

When we define goodness by that which gives God the most glory, and not that which makes us the most happy…our eyes open and we finally begin to see purpose in even the hardest of things. Even our darkest, blackest circumstances can be the canvases for God’s light to touch the world.

Joseph, after being sold into slavery, and put into prison, saw how God worked his pain into good and was able to tell his brothers, the very people who hurt him,

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.”

– Genesis 50:20

This is the God we can put our faith and our trust in. A God that somehow will work everything into good. All the pain, all the black in the world – these are the cracks where He will shine His light – these are the windows where we will see His face.

We will see and know, girls, and the world will see through us – the truth that is true and has always been true.

He is good.

 

“The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desires of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.” -Psalm 145:15-19