The phrase “God is good” does not normally go well with many of us; we find it hard to understand how can God be good with all the pain around us. The reason for this is that we believe “good” is the same as “delightful”; we often think for life to be good everything must be comfortable, convenient, likeable and sweet. But divine wisdom proves this to be untrue.
For me, when it comes to describing God’s goodness the word “profit” comes to mind. Profit is a positive difference between revenue and costs: It is when the revenue out weights the costs. So profit takes costs and revenue into account and usually costs are incurred before revenue. There must also be a time period during which costs and revenue are experienced and profit can only be realised at the end of this period.
God’s goodness is often realised at the very end of the implementation of His plan. Godly love story always has a happy ending. As opposed to ordinary human plans God’s plan usually starts with bitterness but ends with overwhelming gain of fulfilment. As Jesus demonstrated in his first miracle recorded in the Bible – by producing the best wine (from dirty water) after an average wine had run out – God always saves the best for last.
Like a building site, our life may now appear to be messy, inconvenient, and at times traumatic. A very excellent reason why life in this world doesn’t feel so great is because it is still under construction. What God accomplished in Genesis was just one phase of His eternal plan. Since then, as Jesus confirmed in John 5:17, God is still busy working to perfect His plan. In the end, after all has been told and done, we will undoubtedly be dazzled by God’s loving wisdom.
Recently I was reading a wonderful book, “Mere Christianity” by C S Lewis. In it C S Lewis expounded the above point even better. For your benefit I have summarised Lewis’ thoughts as follows;
“Imagine yourself as living house God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand a word of what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and putting an end to the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that house jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. Nonetheless, presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing away a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were here to going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself….The process will be long and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less…”
May the Lord clothe us with patience and understanding. As we bump against ugly scenes and behaviours of other people (and of ourselves) may we remember that we are still much work in progress…. God hasn’t finished with us yet. As we know God saves the best for last so the best is yet to come…
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