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We are the blessed ones. God has been good to us, and we’ve served Him. We’re the ones who walk with the hurting families, who intercede for them, who cry with and for them.
Our families aren’t perfect, but the drama and heartache others face . . . that’s not for us. We’ll walk through everything together with love and compassion for each other.
We love God and He is working all things our for our good. (Romans 8:28)
Oh, but then comes the disillusionment. We who have loved and served God our whole lives are not immune to the effects of living in a fallen world. The blessed can also become the bleeding.
God has been good to us, but sometimes maybe Satan asks something like he asked about Job, “Does he/she serve you for nothing? Look at how you’ve prospered them. Take away the things they hold dear and they will forsake you, God.”
How will we respond when the issues cannot be resolved? When the thought of the next holiday or family gathering ties knots in our stomachs, or makes us grit our teeth, or fills our eyes with tears? When the unity is broken? When the grief is unending? When God’s children or even God disappoints us? When there is no right answer, no right decision, no resolution or compromise that will be acceptable or at least tolerable to everyone we love?
Oh, friend, what will we choose? Will we accept good from the Lord and not trouble? Will we lose our faith in His goodness when He doesn’t come through in a way that satisfies us? When He allows heartache to continue, relationships to strain near breaking, problems to remain unsolved?
Will we still say, “God is good all the time and all the time God is good?”
“It’s not supposed to be this way,” we think. We’re the ones who have always pointed others to God’s faithfulness in sorrow. How can we ever doubt His love and goodness, His perfect plan, His ways that are higher than our ways?
Our humanity is perhaps most evident in our honest, painful questions, but God is mindful that we are but dust. (Psalm 103:14)
If the only thing God ever did was provide a way for our salvation, it would be enough. Jesus is enough. We have no right to demand more, to whine and worry about everything else, to doubt and despair, to question or quit. Yet we do, and, yet how patient and generous our Father is with us!
“He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” Romans 8:32
Our Father has given so much more along with our salvation. His presence persists in the problems, His hope holds through the hurting, His goodness grows around the grief, His promises permeate the pain, His love is lavished in the loneliness, His faithfulness follows through the fear.
How He loves us! We can trust Him. He is always good.
The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Though He slay me, yet I will hope in Him. (Job 1:21, Job 13:15)
Whatever we feel like He has taken, let’s strive to trust that what He returns will be much greater than we can imagine.
“But just as it is written, ‘Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him.’” 1 Corinthians 2:9
No matter what we face, I want to remember God’s mercies never fail. And I want you to remember, too. Rest in your Father’s goodness, dear child of God. When we are both blessed and bleeding, our Father is still the Great Physician.
