God, you’re so good.
Tears welled in my eyes this morning as we sang the lyrics at church.
I had to take a minute to process why the flood of emotions had attached themselves to this simple declaration that I had made thousands of times.
The words have never been untrue, and at times, that’s been hard for my doubter-of-a-heart to believe.
God, you’re so good.
Even when…
My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. Or when my brother and sister-in-law gave birth to our stillborn first nephew after finding out he had Trisomy 13. Or when I struggled through years of singleness and then infertility. Or when we lost our jobs, our home, our community; an identity. Or when we found out that my barely 2-year-old niece had leukemia. Or when it took years to adopt the little girl who had quickly become our daughter. Or when my brother became the 1% of complications and lay open all night on an operating table because of an allergic reaction during open heart surgery.
As I recounted God’s faithfulness through the valleys of uncertainty, fear, and heartbreak I have faced, I was alarmingly aware of his unwavering goodness.
Today, I have the gift of perspective and time. Where I can look back and see how God has been good and present, even in some pretty bleak moments.
He never changed.
My circumstances may have, but His character has remained the same. He is steadfast.
I think it’s why we are asked to REMEMBER a lot.
Deuteronomy is filled with Moses pleading for the Isrealites to remember.
Remember what God has done, how He brought you out of slavery, through a sea (what!), how He rained food from the sky – He took care of you in the lowest, hardest places. Your feet didn’t swell, your clothes didn’t wear out.
You, God, are so good.
How can we forget?
And yet, sometimes, I do.
We peer into a future of uncertainty, filled with fear and worry. We can’t see the other side of the sea and so we fret constantly about how we will get from here to there. How can we possibly make it out of this mess? How will we ever survive? There’s no way to escape – we are surrounded on all sides. It feels helpless. Our efforts get us nowhere – working through every human possibility, coming up empty-handed, coming up defeated.
But then the sea is literally parted. A way forward now, when there was no way.
When we remember, we can’t help but come face to face with the God who can do immeasurably more than all we ask for or imagine. The God who knows our hearts better than we do. The One in whom we find refuge, strength, and comfort.
The gift of time and perspective remind me that my plans, my hopes & dreams… they must be held loosely. Because God, in His goodness, has shown me over and over again that His ways are better. His ways are the ways that my human brain can’t even begin to fathom.
He will get me from here to there.
I don’t have to know how. I don’t even really need to know where “there” is… because His destination will always be better.
Where I think I may want to go isn’t actually where I need to go.
When I thought I needed to be married by a certain age, God showed me that it was infinitely better to wait. When I thought I must have biological children to be a successful woman, God showed me that His plan for our family would surpass my wildest dreams – a little girl that has radically transformed my world in some of the best ways.
Scripture reminds me of the larger narrative.
The truth of God’s goodness isn’t limited to me and what I have experienced.
It expands beyond time, weaving its way into human hearts and souls since the very beginning. It’s a story we are invited into – over and over again.
God, in His goodness, bringing to life what was dead, what was lost… because of how much He loves us.
God, you’re so good.
I pray that, no matter how many times I sing or say it, that this truth dwells deep in my soul. That I would be a person who remembers, who declares it, who trusts it – despite the highest highs and the lowest lows. Even when I’m walking in the valleys of the unknown.
His goodness may look different than what I anticipate in the moment, but He is still good.
All the time.
