By: Pastor Jarren Rogers

God is good.

Words that we speak so often and, many times, without much thought. But what do we mean when we say, “God is good”?

I think back to watching Disney movies with my younger cousins. I don’t remember which one we were watching, but I remember that there’s a twist: a character who was supposed to be good ended up being the villain.

I was pretending to be confused by the reveal.

“Wait. I thought he was a good guy!” I said in mock surprise.

My cousins rolled their eyes at me, “He was just pretending to be good. He’s actually the bad guy.”

“So does that mean that so-and-so is bad too?” I was asking about the main hero of the movie.

“No! He’s a good guy” they went back to watching the movie.

I sat in silence for a bit, then spoke up, “But we thought that the other guy was good and he ended up being bad. How do you know that the hero isn’t actually a bad guy, too?” I thought I had them.

“Because we’ve seen this movie before.” Well, that solved it.

The truth is, I think that we can go through seasons of our life in which it can be easy to confuse God as the “bad guy”. Life can turn upside-down pretty quick. And sometimes there’s no one to blame–it’s really no one’s fault. Things just happen. So we blame God. Maybe He’s the bad guy.

But, I think that’s why we remind ourselves: God is good.

He is good. He is for us. He is on our side. He isn’t actively working against us. He is not trying to trip us up. He isn’t throwing things in our path that He intends to harm us. He’s not grabbing our life and shaking it up like a great snow globe just to see what would happen.

No, because God is good.

It’s in seasons of pain and sadness that it is the hardest to believe this simple truth. It’s hard to see that God is good even when life isn’t. Sometimes, it can become a matter of faith. We have to believe that God is good even when life presents us with evidence to the contrary.

God is good.

He’s not neutral either. He isn’t allowing you to pass Him by. He isn’t looking you over. He isn’t ignoring you or putting you on a shelf. Instead, God is actively at work in your situation. He is working for your good and His glory. His grace is alive and moving in the midst of your busy day–in the lives of you, your family, your coworker, and all you encounter.

Sometimes we just need to be reminded:

God is good.