I don’t think you can progress spiritually until you resolve the question of whether God is good. The goodness of God will make all the difference in your devoted love for God. What keeps us from believing in the goodness of God? After all He sent His Only Son to die on a cross to enable humans to become reconciled to Him in spite of our innate sinful condition. How could He express the extremity of His love more?

God created this world with goodness in mind. Each and every day of creation He looked at what He made and declared it good. Inherent in all of creation is an unrelenting goodness. In the most horrid of experiences there is potential to see good, if you learn how to look for it.

This Sunday our opening prayer went like this:

God the Revealer

God reveals Beauty to us…if we open our eyes to see it.
God reveals Truth to us…if we open our minds to accept it.
God reveals Love to us…if we open our hearts to receive it
God reveals Wonder to us…if we open our arms to embrace it.
May we live each day with open eyes, open minds open hearts, and open arms…always open to a message from God.

I resonated with this prayer. God has been good to me. My life might not appear to be overflowing with goodness. I have many problems and many struggles. I live with disappointment, judgment and rejection. I could list a litany of complaints. In the midst of them all, I have never forgotten that God is good to me. I see His goodness in this fallen world. I notice the monarchs that twitter along my path, if just for seconds. I take in the brightness of a full moon. I hold my husband’s hand, or receive a call from my child, and I remember that God has been good to me. He has been better than I deserve that is for sure. He is much better to me than I am to Him.

Psalm 13:6 says:

I will sing the Lord’s praise, for He has been good to me. Why do we struggle to see God’s goodness?

I believe the prayer above reveals the reasons. If you look for God’s goodness, you will find it. Catherine of Siena wrote :“I want you to be a lover of all things because everything I made—everything –is good and perfect and worthy of love. I, supreme Goodness, made them all-all but sin.”

Finding goodness requires faith that God is and that He is good. After believing in God’s goodness, you will begin to see His good works that He designed you to do. After carrying our God’s good works, you will begin to feel the goodness of God in your heart. You will be rewarded by being able to take in God’s goodness especially in harsh circumstances. The fact that God has never abandoned this ungrateful planet of inhabitants is enough evidence of His goodness, but the reality that He sent His Only Son to recreate the heavens and the earth to its purpose of goodness solidifies any doubt in the goodness of God. If the God in whom you put your faith is not ultimate Goodness, then you are not putting your faith in the One True God.