Tooth Madness (part 2)

Well good news!

Just a brief tooth update;
Though I am one tooth less wise than I was yesterday, I feel pretty good overall. I have two stitches which I’ve been told will dissolve, but I slept really well and there is not a lot of pain.
Maybe it’s all due to the pain drugs:)
But I’ll take it!

This whole ordeal has led me to think about stuff.
(What else is new?)
We’ve been singing a song at church.
“You’re a good, good father,
that’s who you are,
that’s who you are,
that’s who you are.
And I am loved by you,
That’s who I am,
Who I am,
Who I am.“

It’s a tad bit cheesy and repetitive, as many worship songs are, but I sing it every single time because I find it so incredibly challenging.
It says 2 things;
1. God is good.
2. God loves me.

Even though many people I meet find it very difficult to believe that God loves them, or that they are loved at all by anyone just as they are for that matter, I can get behind the fact that God loves me. For some reason I don’t have trouble with that one. Maybe it’s because I feel so loved by so many people.
It’s the question of whether God is good that troubles me. Again, many people that I meet don’t have much trouble getting behind that one. I am definitely not one of them.

God is good?

In my own case I often wonder if God is actually good. I can have a week of pain and frustration like the one I just had, and God is good? I can be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life and unable to work, and God is good?

And this question allows me to get outside of myself again thankfully.
So many people are dying on the streets violently, and God is good?
My friends who work in shelters and drop ins and who do street outreach are suffering from trauma from the violence and death they encounter all around them, and God is good?
The Ontario Premier is calling people with mental health issues ‘crazy’, and God is good?
The President of the United States is incredibly hateful and racist and behaves like a little child when he doesn’t get his own way, and God is good?
A man and his little girl lie facedown in water having drowned from trying to get a better life for themselves, and God is good?
People are praising God because they got a good parking spot at the mall or have been able to find a way to buy their dream car and live in a fancy house while so many can’t even afford groceries, and God is good?

The only way any of this can make any sense to me is if I believe something better is coming. The only way that I can believe that God is good is if I redefine what ‘good’ actually means.

I’m working on it. I’m not there this week. But I will continue to sing the song because I really do want to believe that God is good and that God loves all of us.

That would indeed be good news.

Come Lord Jesus.
Come quickly