God is good all the time. 

We give lip-service to this important (and profound) theological statement, but in the nitty-gritty of life, our hearts often struggle to hold tightly to it. We are weak, and what we see speaks loudly to us. We see one of our children being bullied at school because no one else there looks like him or her. We see the local government denying our visas, forcing us to find a new place to live and work. We see failed relationships or unreciprocated attempts at friendship and feel lonely. We see a spouse overcome with depression and don’t know how to help. 

These real struggles cannot be resolved and tied neatly with a bow in one short devotional, but it’s healthy to admit that sometimes the suffering and struggles we see around us give us pause. In the moment, they seem too hard to reconcile with what we believe. We echo the words of the father in Mark 9: “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief.” 

The intersection of God’s goodness with our ordinary lives is the cross of Christ. At the cross, Christ experienced heinous suffering, and His followers witnessed what certainly appeared to be the failure of a movement. How could God have let this happen? But God ordained the cross as the means by which Christ defeated sin and death; this victory was confirmed by His rising triumphantly on that first Easter Sunday. The best thing in the whole world came out of the worst suffering. 

God uses suffering in the lives of His people according to this pattern. Struggles serve to crucify our selfish desires, our heart idols, or even our misguided ideas about Him and then to produce in us resurrection fruit – joy, hope, endurance, trust. The hardships might be large or small, long-lasting or short-lived, but God’s purposes both in our hearts and in His world will be accomplished through them. He works all things for good in the lives of His children. 

He is good. All the time.