4 minute read
Good Things When Life Isn’t Good
By Rev. George Borghardt
God is good, and God does good: good creation, good works, good salvation. If the Lord is doing it, it’s going to be good. How could it not be? Our good God is doing it!
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Remember creation? Each day ended the same: evening, morning, another good day. After He was done, His creation was very good. Good is what He does.
We fell. Adam and Eve ate the fruit that He said wouldn’t be good for them. They ate it anyway. It wasn’t good for us either. With our fall, death came–also not good. It was our fault, not His, our sin, not His. The Lord doesn’t do evil, remember? He does good.
Then what does He do? He makes it good—makes creation good again—by redeeming it in His Son. Jesus lived His good life before God, keeping good all that is good about God. Then He took all the sins and bad of the whole world upon Himself and died the death we deserve.
Did you catch that? God even takes evil—our evil— and uses it for good in Jesus! Because of Him, we are saved.We get heaven, eternal life, and a perfect (very good) relationship with God. God outdid death by the good work of His Son.
And so faith trusts that what God is doing is always good. Faith clings to the simple promise that the Lord is “ever bringing good from ill” (LSB 394:3). He did it in creation. He did it with our redemption. He’s doing it now.
But life’s not always good. What happens when you don’t make the cut for the football team? Or when the girl you ask to prom says, “No”? Or the boy you like doesn’t like you back? Or worse, he likes your best friend? What happens when the doctor finds something strange going on with your mom? What then? Where’s God and all His goodness when my little sister is born with some super-rare genetic disorder or my cousin isn’t even born alive at all?
These things hurt. They’re scary. They are definitely not right. God didn’t intend them for you. He’s all about being good to you in Christ. Some things can’t be fixed with the wave of a wand, even a good one. The pain is deep, and sometimes you just want to look at the heavens and cry, “Not good!”
The Lord knows you are hurting. He weeps when you weep. He did on the cross when He died for all that is not good about you and your life. He does now as you go through all the bad things in your world. But He doesn’t stop being God in your sadness! He makes all things good in the sending of His Son. Good is what the Father does after all.
It’s not that God is so big that He can fix anything. (He is, but that’s not the Gospel.) The Gospel is found in the cross of Christ where God makes all things good for you—even in sickness, rejection, and death. Christ has taken on Himself all the bad, all of the rejection. All of it died with Him. He rose.You died and rose with Him in your Baptism.
Life still hurts. It still stinks. It’s still not fair and not the way you planned. It’s not what you wanted.Yet faith remembers that God has mercy upon us and saves us in Christ.
The Christian faith is not a “just believe and it’ll all be better” kind of religion. True faith sees beyond this mess and knows that things are already better because of Christ. By His death on the cross, Christ has redeemed us. We can’t come up with something this good from ourselves, and we certainly don’t believe it because the evidence around us is so convincing. That’s why faith comes to us as a good gift from God.
Faith reminds us that it’s all good, and it’s going to be good too. It’s going to be good because God gave up His Son for it to be good. He’s using all these evil things that have been flung at us in this world to save us.
Weep with those who weep. God does too. Smile with those who are smiling. And above all else know this: the Father has sent His Son to die for you and all things now are good in Him. And nothing—not in heaven, or on earth, or under the earth—shall be able to separate you from the love—the goodness of God—that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
In Christ. In the Cross. In the empty tomb. In the font. In the words of Absolution. In the body and blood of Jesus. That’s where He’s good to you, and He will be good to you. One day soon, when the worst thing happens to you that could possibly happen to you, He’ll show you that He really has made even that into the best thing (the good-est) that could ever happen to you.
Good. God does good: good creation, good works, good salvation. He’s doing good for you in good times and in times that are just tough. After all, if God is doing it, it’s going to be good for you.
Rev. George Borghardt III is the Associate/ Youth Pastor at St. Mark Lutheran Church in Conroe, Texas. He also serves as the Deputy Executive for Higher Things, and can be reached at revborghardt@higherthings.org
