All The Time

I had a weekend that made me question God's goodness. The details of all that happened aren't important (well, not for purposes of this post. I haven't even told my closest friends what happened.), but my questioning of God is.

We just have a different view of good than God does. Our view of good is what we want; His view of good is what we need. Even keeping that in mind, though, doesn't make it easy to trust that God is good if you can't see how something in your life is going to help you in any way.

We humans are terrible at a lot of things: putting others ahead of ourselves consistently, focusing on the future and not the present, focusing on the big picture and not the little things, remembering that what is invisible can be more important than what we can see or touch, and (for me, at least) singing. But one thing we're very good at is looking for reasons behind things. Even four-year-olds constantly ask "Why?" about almost everything around them. As adults, we can take a lot of things if only we know the reason for them.

And perhaps that's what made me question this weekend whether God is truly good. I had something bad happen and can't find the reason for it; thus, God is not always good...or so goes my logic. If that is the case, then it is not that I don't always get what I want that makes me question His goodness, but that there is uncertainty. I'm willing to accept that which will hurt me initially if it will help me long-term, but not willing to accept pain without reason. It's the uncertainty that made me question Him.

Anyone who's spent time around a four-year-old knows there comes a point in time in which the target of their questions runs out of answers, throws up their hands, and says, "Because!" It might not be a bad strategy for me in seeking an answer. I can ask why all I want, but at the end of the day, what happened happened. There's nothing I can really do about it, no way I can change it. All that there is left to do is trust God, just because...He is good...all the time.