Abstract Concepts

“God is good.” I’ve heard that phrase all of my life and growing up it was a mantra for many people in the church I attended. One person would say “God is good” and another would reply with “All the time.” But there was a long season of my life where that phrase didn’t feel true. When in my heart I chose to believe in the goodness of God but that’s not how it felt. I’d go through seasons where He felt distant and at times even cruel.” I found myself in a place where despite me doing the best I knew how to do, the life I was living didn’t line up with what I saw in scripture. “God is good” seemed more like an abstract concept such calculus or gravity than it seemed to be a truth to be lived out. I knew they were true but couldn’t wrap my mind around them. In those seasons I found myself seeking out sermons and books on the goodness of God just hoping I could crack the formula and "faith" God into the happiness and contentedness my soul craved. I finally found myself in a place thinking I must be the exception to the rule. I bought the lie that I was, in fact, too broken for even Jesus to help. But coming face to face with my brokenness and my propensity for sin was the very place I needed to be in order to see the goodness of God and experience the life He called me to live. Piece by piece God collected all the broken places of my life and taught me how to bring them to Him and experience the fullness of the gift of the cross. The things that I once held tightly as secrets and shame became the ares in my life where I saw God move most. And the things that I thought would disqualify me from being used by Him have been the very things He uses most as a catalyst to show His love. It is the very things that I thought would break me that have gotten me to be able to know, deep in my knower, that God is in fact good. Even when it doesn’t feel like it. Even in our brokenness, sin and propensity to turn from The One Who Loves Us Most, He is good. I haven’t written a blog in a while, but this morning as I sit here, recovering from a cold that has had me down a couple days, I can’t shake the feeling that today there is someone in the place where I was years ago. The place where the goodness of God feels like a concept more abstract than a Jackson Pollock painting. One of the things I find most beautiful about The One Who Loves Us Most, is that we can come to Him without pretense and let Him know when we do not feel like He is good. And it is in those moments of honesty, clarity, and brokenness that we come face to face with the beauty of the cross. And when His sacrifice meets the broken places of our hearts, we will come to the place of being able to wholeheartedly proclaim the goodness of God.