It’s easy to forget that God is good all the time, isn’t it? 

Our intellectual knowledge that tells us He is, but sometimes our life experiences appear to be saying otherwise. We’ve moved across the world to serve God, but things just aren’t going well. Maybe the job you thought you would have in your new country has not turned out to be what you anticipated. Or perhaps the school that seemed perfect for your children has left them unhappy and lonely. Maybe you’ve been working very hard on language acquisition but just cannot seem to make much progress. Perhaps you felt so excited about mercy ministry when you started, but after several years, you feel burned out and discouraged. Or it could be that you’ve set up a life in your new country and are happy but that suddenly the political situation has changed and rendered it unsafe for you to stay.  

I imagine that you can find yourself, either present or past, in one or more of those scenarios. The frustration and discouragement can lead to many questions, one of which is often pointed at the goodness of God. If God is always good, why am I struggling so much? 

We easily forget that God’s goodness is not determined by what we see or feel but by His very character. We do not have His eyes to see the bigger plan, but we do have the Bible, His very words to us! And in the Bible, we read of Jesus dying on the cross to save His people. To the earthly eyes of His disciples, family, and friends, His death must have seemed like the worst possible outcome. But we know, on this side of things, that at the cross we see the ultimate display of God’s goodness toward us. When we are tempted to doubt, tempted to think that God has abandoned us, tempted to listen to our struggles instead of God’s word, we need to turn our gazes backwards to the cross and upwards toward the God who showed His love for us through the death of His Son.  

He really is good all the time!