God gets to define things the way He wants to because He is God–in charge of the Universe.
I didn’t think it was “good” when my son was evaluated as autistic.
I didn’t think it was “good” when my depression descended on my husband.
I didn’t think it was “good” when my baby girl turned blue within hours of being born and was admitted to NICU.
I didn’t think it was “good” when the Twin Towers fell.
Had I been there, I wouldn’t have called what happened at Golgotha–at Calvary’s Hill–“good” either.
The injustice of an illegal trial that sentenced Jesus to die…
The brutal beating, ripping flesh…
The rejection and abandonment by the closest of friends…
The mockery of a crowd that had praised only 5 days earlier…
The agonizing, writhing of a body wracked with pain from spikes driven through ligaments and flesh, lifted up on a roughly formed wooden cross, shreds of wood lacerating already torn skin…we’ve all seen the movie, The Passion of the Christ…
What was “good” about what happened there?
To find the good, we have to set our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. What is seen is temporary…what is unseen is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18).
To find the good, we have to trust that God gets to call the shots and he always does what he does for His reasons…and His ways are beyond my ability to comprehend (Isaiah 55:8,9). If I could fathom his ways, he wouldn’t be God at all, but would be small and impotent.
So, God gets to define “good.”
What happened that day so many years ago, was “good.” But it sure wasn’t obvious that it was good.
What God calls “good,” sometimes seems to be anything but. The cross proves otherwise.
