No Good Thing

I didn't have intentions of starting a series, and I still don't, but this post is almost perfect as a "Part 2" for my last post! I had talked about waiting for God and trusting Him to bring life to situations that look dead from your perspective. I believe with all my heart that God is fully capable of bringing life to those situations, and sometimes He does. I also know that He can take years or even decades for that to come about, or He may never. It's easy to say that you trust God when you have a vision of what He will do, and don't expect Him to deviate too far from that vision. It gets a little harder when you face the fact that God's goodness and sovereignty don't always feel good, and sometimes He doesn't just deviate from your vision - He takes a completely different path.

Through the course of your life, the detours, the short cuts, the winding and treacherous paths that end up being dead end roads, God is good. He is good to you. He is good to me. He takes care of you.  He takes care of me. He has given us what we need, but His provision looks different from person to person. For me, the struggle to trust sets in when I begin to compare my life to others' while I wait on the Lord.

I wish I had their health.

I wish I had her job.

I wish I had his car.

Will I ever have a husband like her's?

What if I never have children?

What we all have to come to terms with is that God takes care of us individually. What is good for you may not be good for me. Maybe someday it will be. Maybe I'll have that car, maybe there will be a miracle or medical discovery that allows me to have the gift of a pain free life, maybe I'll have a house that is full of kids that I will raise with a God honoring man. But right now, that's not where God has me. While all those things are good and respectable on their own, they are not good for me at this point in my life.

It's hard to stop comparing when an area of your life looks rather bleak and hopeless next to someone who's life is flourishing in that area. I often want to weigh out my life with others' as if God ordains our lives through the scales of justice, each attribute equally enriching or lessening the quality of one's life. The truth is that God makes everything beautiful in its time (Ecclesiastes 3:1-11), and some things may not have a time in our lives. Even if some of our lilies never bloom (refer to my last post), we can be confident of this: we lack no good thing. We may not have what someone else has, but as sons and daughters of Christ, we have all we need when we need it. And when we begin to live our lives in this truth rather than the lie that God is withholding good from us, we will experience true contentment. The kind that Paul talks about in Philippians 4, and be able to experience that abundance of life that Jesus came to give (John 10:10). But it's only possible when we choose to change our perspective to one that trusts and honors God for who He is and all He has done for us - even when it looks a little different than our neighbors.

"Even strong young lions sometimes go hungry, but those who trust in the Lord will lack no good thing." - Psalm 34:10