Out of the Quiet

image from here

I know I haven't been very vocal in this space lately. If I'm quite honest, it's not that I've been too busy to put ink to my thoughts. Neither has it been that I've been processing my life in alternate ways. The plain truth is that I just haven't had much to say. I've been gliding through a life that's become my normal, complete with its joys and frustrations.

That was until I was recently challenged by a friend to think about God's goodness. How can I know if He is good if it only appears as though He is good to some?

Soon after our discussion, I prayed to the Lord to help me to see Him as not just good-to-me, but as GOOD. I don't think I even know what that means, if I've only ever perceived it as material blessing, financial security, relational comfort. If I count God's kindness to me as the good things I've gotten from him, I've bought into a small-minded theology.

As sure as He lives, He's begun to answer my prayers to see and know Him apart from His gifts. In a real, in-my-face way, I'm being called to trust again in a God I cannot see. I'm being asked to believe in a God that provides, a God called El Shaddai, All Sufficient. I cling to the wisdom of Proverbs that asserts:

Those who trust in their riches wll fall,

but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf.

Proverbs 11:28