God Is Good

Scripture

Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! His faithful love endures forever.

~Psalm 136:1, NLT

Quote

“God is good beyond all others, indeed, He alone is good in the highest sense of the word: He is the source of good, the good of all good, the sustainer of good, the perfecter of good and the rewarder of all good.”

~Charles H. Spurgeon

How fitting to open the scripture and read Psalm 136:1 on the day after THANKSGIVING. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving that began with our Thanksgiving Day praise and worship. Our family gathered at Hannah’s for TG dinner and then I spent most of the evening with the grands. It is a joy divine to be a granddaddy. I never had a granddaddy, well I did have one grand father but he was not crazy about kids. One of my life goals is to make sure my grand children have fun memories of their granddaddy. I was tempted to put something on FaceBook about how wonderful our Thanksgiving went but that is a little to public and there are a lot of hurting families. Whereas it is not possible for us to exaggerate God’s goodness, we do have to make sure our praise is pure. Sometimes our praise borders on boasting which is a pride issue that can be hurtful to others. Not that many read the blog and I feel more comfortable in saying, “God has really been good to the Bailey’s.” Although our problems are small compared to most, we have had our struggles. God has worked some miracles in our family and we were all together in one accord and that is a huge blessing. Jack didn’t pull this off I can assure you: Jack was humbled and helpless. I can’t even brag on him for his faith because he had basically given up when God intervened.

I visited our New Orleans mom back in October and she gave me some books: one is a bible and a translation I am not familiar with, The Living New Testament [not New Living] and Matthew 6:34 ends with this one line…“Live one day at a time.” Who among us lives one day at a time? I can think of only four groups:

  1. The terminally ill–I have spent countess hours with folks who were dying and they knew it. They live on a higher plane, yes a much higher plane than you and I.  A man dying with cancer doesn’t get too concerned with Iron Bowl. These folks know they have no time to waste on trivial pursuits.
  2. The grieving–A person in grief mode cannot think beyond today. I’m not sure they live one day at a time, it is more like an hour at a time. I think of my grieving nieces and nephews. Their goal is just to survive the day.
  3. The broken-hearted–The loss of a love one can break the heart but so can a relationship gone bad. I have seen divorce break hearts for years and they always leave someone hurting. The first thing I tell the hurting party is, “You are going to have to take one day at a time. It is the only way to keep from being overwhelmed by grief, anger and depression.”
  4. The thankful–Job the patriarch understood that life is a mixture of good and bad, he told his foolish and nagging wife, “Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” Job’s experience with evil taught him to live one day at a time. We never know when another storm is coming but we do know that God will see us through the storm. Those who are extremely grateful, live one day at a time.

By the way, I had some thoughts on the goodness of God. God is good, He is infinitely good, He is essentially good, He is eternally good, He is amazingly good, He is inherently good, He is perfectly good and He is gloriously good. God is always good in spite of the evil around us.

I decided to take a few days off during Thanksgiving and then last night, I slap dab forgot to post this blog. I do have one prayer request to share with you: Larry Garner is not doing well. He has been moved to ICU. Pray for Larry and family.

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