Where Is God’s Goodness In 2020?

 

This has been a challenging and heartbreaking year for many as COVID-19 has changed a lot of the ways we used to normally operate. I don’t have to list the devastating effects of the pandemic, because you already know them and are living them right now. On top of that, we are in the midst of divisiveness and high tension with the election. It’s been a year of disasters including wildfires, earthquakes, and hurricanes. It’s been a year of heartbreaking deaths: Kobe Bryant, George Floyd, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Chadwick Boseman, and the worst for me-- my beloved Mother-In Law. Throughout all of this the question I keep coming back to is, “God, where is your goodness?”

I’ve always struggled with believing God is good. You would think it would be ingrained in my mind growing up in church and participating in: 
Preacher: God is good 
Church: All the time 
Preacher: All the time 
Church: God is good. 
Yet personally, I've wrestled with the disconnect between what my head knows and what my heart believes.

This isn’t a new struggle, in fact it goes all the way back to the beginning. In Genesis 3 the serpent tempts Eve with the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the words of his temptation, he makes Eve question God. “Did God really say?” asks the serpent. The serpent was creative in his temptation of Eve because he not only made her question God's command, but God's character. I can imagine that Eve may have thought “Why would God give us this entire garden but keep this one thing from us? Why is He doing that? This looks like exceptional fruit to me.. It actually looks better than any of the other fruit. Why would he keep the best fruit from us?” 

We may not know what exactly Eve was trusting over God when she decided to break His loving command, but from what I see, she let incorrect thinking about God (thinking he was withholding good from her, or hiding something, or being cruel by his command) lead her to trust herself, and what she thought was good, over God. 

Thankfully God doesn’t leave us in this question, He tenderly helps us trust him. There are many reasons to trust His goodness, but two that I have found most helpful are that He never changes & His goodness has been proven. 

God Never Changes

“The Moon is Always Round”, by Jonathan Gibson, tells the story of a father and son. Every night when going to bed the father would ask “Son, what shape is the moon?”, and the son would reply saying “a banana” or whatever shape the moon had taken that night. Then the father would tell his son, no matter what shape it looks like, the moon is always round. Gibson wrote this book to help explain to his son and other children (and me, a 28 year old adult), about God's goodness. God’s character never changes (James 1:17), even though our circumstances may change the way we see God (just like the moon’s rotation around the earth changes how we see the moon). At the end of the book he asks his son, “What does it mean that the moon is always round?”  The son responds, “God is always good”. 

God’s Goodness Proven

A few years ago, a mentor of mine encouraged me to use one color and underline in my bible where I see God's goodness, so on days when I’m struggling to believe it, I can open my bible and see it quickly. I’ve been doing this for 5+ years now, so you can imagine I have a lot of things underlined. Here are a few favorites:

Hosea 2:14;19
“Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.

19 And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. 20 I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord.”

Here, even though Israel has turned their back on God and chosen to love other gods more than Him, He has mercy on them. He brings them into the wilderness (place of hardship) so that He can speak tenderly to them, and then he makes a covenant with them (unbreakable vow to Israel not on what they can do for Him, but what He will do for them) that He will betroth them to Him forever in all things good (righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy, and faithfulness). AND he will be near to them, he will have a close & intimate relationship with them. 

Romans 8: 31-32
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 

Rev 21:3-4
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

What can we say to the chaos, uncertainty, sadness, and other things that have come from 2020? That God has been faithful to His people before and He will be faithful to us again. He did not spare his only Son for us, but sentenced him to death on a cross on our behalf so that we can be brought into relationship with Him. And one day Christ is coming back, and will bring all the promises He made in Hosea 2 to reality. 

Until then, the moon may look like a banana, but the moon is always round, and God is always good.