God Is Always Good

“Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness.” (Ps 65:11 AV)

It is almost a given the last few years have been rough.  The world is rapidly changing and not for the better.  One cannot turn on the news without hearing non-stop bad news.  It’s enough to drive one into a serious bout with depression.  If we are not careful, we will focus only one the bad news and not the blessings of life.  The writer above suffered from the adversity that never seemed to wain.  David had his share of bad years.  The Bible relays much of David’s sufferings while he fled from Saul.  Those were not happy days.  However, David could still share the blessings of God reflected in the verse above.  Whether we can see it or not, God’s blessings are always around us.  It is a matter of perspective.

This holiday season is going to be interesting.  As I was watching a commercial for some new toy, I couldn’t help but think if the toy would even be available on our shelves.  Then my mind went back about forty years.  I remember Christmas shopping back in the seventies and eighties.  At that time, my parents required we use some of our paper route money as Christmas money for our parents and siblings.  In our little town, we only had a couple of department stores.  There was not a whole lot of selection.  You just went around and picked the best representation of your appreciation for the person in mind.  My mind went back to simpler days.  The days when there were only three T.V. channels.  I wondered if this year’s holiday season will bring our nation back to times when we appreciated the more basic things of life.  Perhaps we don’t need the newest technology.  Perhaps we don’t need the flashiest toy.  To say that we were not blessed fifty years ago is to misunderstand how wonderful life was then.  Snow was our new toy.  A fresh coat of wet white stuff meant we could go outside and build a fort.  We have some very lean years back then.  Growing up in a family of eleven siblings, food was not plenty.  Christmas, although there were gifts, there were not loads of them.  Looking at our life, one would think we were suffering.  But we didn’t know that.  Why?  Because we saw the blessings of God rather than that which we did not have.

God blesses us whether we can see it or not.  He does this day by day.  He does this month by month.  And, He does this year by year.  No matter the wars, the diseases, the financial troubles, or the stress on the supply chain, the fields are still growing crops.  The cows are still in the fields producing milk.  The flowers still bloom.  The babies still play.  The dog still wags his tail.  The saints still sing.  The preaching goes on.  And the Bible is still on our laps.  We are coming up on Thanksgiving.  A special day where we remember that through adversity, God still provides.  After those pilgrims suffered as they did, God met them with an amazing bounty of provision.  If we are of the right mind and we can look for the blessing of God, then we can see how much God has blessed us this past year.  We have grown closer to the LORD.  We have paid our bills.  We have survived much adversity and also have the awesome privilege of sharing the love of Christ with others.  God is good.  And He is all the time.  Let us remember how truly blessed we are and it will carry us through the hardest times of life.