The Robbery of Refusing to Receive

We are entering that time of year when we seem to think more about giving than usual. November brings an emphasis on giving thanks, and December brings the giving of gifts. A common verse related to giving that is often quoted, even by those who do not believe in Jesus, is part of Acts 20:35, where Paul quotes Jesus, saying, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”  This verse is used to encourage the cultivating of a giving spirit, but the way we interpret these words often has the added effect of discouraging a receiving spirit. It’s as if we attach an addendum to the phrase, reading it as if it said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive, so be sure you’re giving and not receiving.” But is that really what the verse is saying?

First of all, we shouldn’t add anything to Scripture, so the fact that there is no addendum should be the first major clue that Jesus was not telling us to avoid receiving. But aside from that clue, we should look elsewhere in the Bible, because the best place to go for insight on how to interpret a passage of Scripture is another passage of Scripture.

One such passage where we can look to shed light on the giving/receiving idea is 2 Corinthians 8. Paul is telling the Corinthians about the generosity of the Macedonians and encouraging them to give in kind. In explaining the extent of the Macedonians’ generosity, Paul writes in verses 3 and 4, “For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints” (ESV).

These verses, like the ones in Acts are reinforcing the idea that giving is good. But notice how Paul describes the Macedonian view of giving. They wanted “the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints.” There were fellow brothers and sisters in Christ in need, and the Macedonians wanted to be part of the blessing of meeting those needs. They gave; others received; and all were blessed by it. But what if those in need had refused to receive what the Macedonians gave? Not only would they still have been in need, but the Macedonians would have been robbed of the blessing of giving.

Over and over again, I have seen this hypothetical scenario play out in reality—Christians are in need, but they refuse to receive help, sometimes even refusing to reveal their need in the first place. Perhaps this refusal comes as an effect of the Church’s focus on giving with the implied notion that receiving is bad. Perhaps it stems from deep-seated pride (heaven forbid we admit a weakness or acknowledge some deficiency on our part). Perhaps it is rooted in a misguided sense of self-sufficiency that is only encouraged by our individualistic, “American-dream,” pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps cultural mentality (heaven forbid we meet something that we cannot fix or solve or provide for on our own). Perhaps it emerges from a well-intentioned desire not to be a burden to others.

Whatever the reason, it is all-too-often the case that we in the Church are hesitant to or even adamantly against making our needs known to our family in Christ, whether they be physical or spiritual. If pride and self-sufficiency are our reasons, then repentance is in order. And if the reason is the thought that receiving help is equivalent to being a burden, we should broaden our view.  What we fail to realize when we refuse to receive, whatever our reason, is that not only is our stubbornness and pride keeping us from having our needs met, but it is also robbing our brothers and sisters of the opportunity to be obedient to Christ by giving and of the blessing that comes with this generous obedience.

I am reminded of an inner-city ministry that I once was a part of, which was largely run by volunteers from the church every Saturday. The operation had many moving parts and required a good deal of organization. One day, someone approached the leader with an observation that there was a way to streamline the process, reducing the number of volunteers needed to successfully fulfill the ministry’s objective. The leader’s response has always stuck with me. To paraphrase, he said that, yes, this observer was probably right but that the purpose of this ministry was not merely to serve the inner-city community but also to provide church members with an opportunity to serve, to be in the inner-city and see the needs firsthand. Simplifying the process would make it more efficient, yes, but it would reduce the number of people who would experience giving to those in need.

Similarly, how often does our refusal to ask for or receive help keep others from fulfilling the ministry of giving? And, really, if we stop to think about it, how can those of us who are in Christ legitimately be proud enough to refuse aid, physical or spiritual, from obedient human hands? Have we not received the most humbling gift of all—unearned and undeserved salvation from God Himself? So whenever we are tempted to keep our needs to ourselves, let us put our pride to death, remember the cross of Jesus Christ, and reach out to our family of faith, the community that God has given us. In doing so, we will not only open the door for ourselves to receive, but we will also be giving the opportunity to give, thus blessing those who bless us.

On Gender, Truth, and Trust

It’s hard to think of a more polarizing issue in recent days than the appointment and confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh—and in our increasingly divided culture, that’s saying something. The events surrounding his confirmation and the accusations made against him have brought out some of the strongest feelings in people across the political spectrum. I have my own opinions on the specific matter of the accusations and subsequent decisions made in this instance, but the following post is not about that. Rather, I want to speak to some of the broader, deeper, more general issues that this whole debacle has brought to light, or at least that it should bring to light.

We’ve seen the calls, ranging from genuine pleading to shrill demanding, that victims of abuse be heard. As someone who has many dearly loved ones who have been abused in one way or another and to varying degrees, I agree that the abused most certainly should be heard. We must take care not to heap trauma upon trauma. In the past weeks, though, we have seen this call for the abused to be heard expanded to include the assertion that women should be heard—and believed—period. As a woman, I agree that women should be respected and heard. I also agree that they should be believed—if they are telling the truth.

The concerning problem with the trajectory we have seen of late is that the message seems to assert that women should be believed simply because they are women, and it equates women with victims (or, alternatively “survivors”) and vice versa. This assertion and equating of terms is problematic. First, it’s a problem for a very a practical reason: it’s simply not logically sustainable. Here’s why:

Victims are not always women, and perpetrators of abuse are not always men. Or, put another way, women are capable of abusing and manipulating others because we have the same inherited corruptness that men do. So whether we equate victimhood and womanhood or whether we rate womanhood over victimhood in the scheme of who should always be believed, we leave no room for two categories—male victims of female abuse and female victims of female abuse.

Some might think it’s absurd that I even bring up male victims of female abuse, since they certainly seem to be the minority. (I haven’t done any studies on statistics in this area.) But they do exist (see Genesis 39 for an ancient example), and they are no less worth caring for than female victims. In our cultural "war on patriarchy," must we therefore ignore, disbelieve, and disrespect men who have been ill-treated by women? Should we have no care for the trauma they have experienced?

But perhaps you’re not ready to go there yet. Perhaps you still have a bad taste in your mouth where men are concerned and believe that to recognize male victims of abuse is to take the focus off of women, spitting in the face of womankind and adding insult to injury. Even so, there is still a problem with saying women should always be believed. If women are to be believed without question, who do we believe in a she-said/she-said scenario?  (Check out 1 Kings 3:16-28 for a doosy of a case.)  If two women tell contradicting stories, they can’t both be right; to believe one woman is to disbelieve the other.  So the principle of always believing women is one that cannot be followed in the most basic, practical sense.

The second problem with asserting that women are to be believed simply because they are women is the corresponding implication that men are to be disbelieved/distrusted simply because they are men. Just as perpetrators of abuse are not always men, men are not always perpetrators of abuse. Yes, some men are abusers. But many are not. And just as we women would not want the actions of some women to be used to characterize all of us, we should not characterize all men by the actions of some.
 

Newsflash: men are no more inherently evil than women are, and women are not inherently good. All of us have the imprint of corruption on our souls. And any woman who does not recognize her own capacity to manipulate, lie, and abuse needs to take a good, long look in the soul-mirror. Our female forebears have given us a myriad of case studies for these vices: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Potiphar’s wife, Delilah, Jezebel, just to name a few. These women’s lives should be cautionary tales to all of us, for we have the same seed of sinfulness buried deep within us, and unless we get a spiritual heart transplant from God himself, we are not free to conquer our depravity, and our default remains corruption. 

Having established that women are capable of lying and/or of misrepresenting the truth, we see another, philosophical problem with this idea of believing women solely because they are women: adhering to it requires that sometimes we believe things that are not true.  For postmodernists, this won’t be a problem, because when truth is relative, there can be no untruth. Thus, what is true for you doesn’t have to be true for me, and if two people tell contradicting stories, no one has a right to say that one is correct and the other is not. Explaining the unsustainability of a postmodern view of truth is a topic for another day, but for the sake of argument, let’s say that we’ve already had that discussion and established that truth is not relative.

If we accept that truth is not relative, then we can posit that only things that are true should be believed. This does not mean that only true things are believed, just that only true things should be believed. In other words, we should care that what we believe is actually true. Citing a person’s gender as the sole basis for believing them, with no concern for discerning the truth, is thus an assault on the very foundation of truth itself.

The challenge is that when it comes to people, sometimes it can be difficult to discern who is telling the truth or who is giving an accurate account.  Some things we will never know the truth about this side of eternity. But thankfully, there is Someone who has told us the truth about Himself and about ourselves, and He is completely trustworthy. He has told us that all of us—female and male—are both made in His image and afflicted with an inherited corruption from our first ancestors. This two-sided reality means that we should both respect every individual (because of his or her inherent dignity as God’s image-bearers) and accept that every individual is imperfect and thus cannot be blindly assumed to be trustworthy.

As imperfect humans, we are not unfailingly trustworthy. We will hurt each other, and we will let each other down. So we must earn each other’s trust, not demand it. And this must be done at an individual level—for men and women alike. Furthermore, as seekers of truth, we need to be discerning, using our minds to evaluate the veracity of someone’s statements. After all, if we believe that all are created equal, then all deserve to have their claims evaluated by the same standard, not prejudged one way or the other based on the claimant’s gender. Men and women are different, yes, but we are both human. Let’s not forget that.

Year Three in the Rearview, Year Four through the Windshield

How it has been three years since An Iris Awaits was born is beyond me, but three-years-old it is! So as we start its fourth year, I’d like to glance back, as we have done at every other milestone, but this time I’m going to dedicate the most time to looking forward, because I have an exciting announcement to share!

In the past year, the blog hasn’t seen quite as many posts as years previous; other life responsibilities have often prevented me from writing every other week as I originally began doing. But with God’s grace, I’ve been able to keep learning, keep growing, and keep writing through it all.

Learning is a life-long process, and it is rarely something done in isolation. God kindly teaches us through His Word, through resources, through experience, and often through other people. Looking over my own life, I count as treasures the people God has caused to cross my path, people He has used to teach me in various settings and in numerous ways. I have often thought that I wish everyone had the opportunity to know these men and women of God and to learn from their wisdom.

This desire, combined with the wish to keep An Iris Awaits fully active during this period of increased responsibilities, has led me to develop a new conversations series, which I hope to unveil within the next month or so. In this series, you will get to meet some of the men and women who have influenced my life and to hear from them about a topic either they have taught me about or are passionate about themselves—or both.

I am so looking forward to introducing you to each of these individuals and to letting you glean from their knowledge and wisdom over the next year. And in between these conversations, you’ll still find the same challenging and encouraging Irises from me waiting there for you. So here’s to year four and another chapter in the journey of growing in the knowledge of God and in love for Him and for each other.

Thank you for journeying with me.

The Myth of Neutrality

There are some Bible verses that are widely known even among those who do not read the Bible. Among these, John 3:16 is probably the most famous: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (ESV). This verse that speaks of the great love of God often leads people to ask the question, “How could a God so loving send people to an eternal punishment of separation from Him?” At face value, it seems like a real doozey of a question. We don’t like thinking of God “sending people to Hell.” But if we keep reading in John 3, we discover a nugget of truth that speaks to the inaccurate assumption on which that question is based.

Asking, “How could a loving God send people to Hell?” presupposes one of two things: that humans are born inherently good or that we are born in a state of neutrality, neither inherently good nor inherently bad and that it is what we do in life that determines our merit in the eyes of God. The first idea is quickly nipped in the bud by the incredibly clear statements in Romans 3:10 and 23: “as it written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one;” and “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (ESV). We are not born as good people at our core. Our natural bent is not to do good or be good. As many pastors have said, all one has to do to see evidence of this is to spend some time in the nursery; we are selfish, self-centered creatures.

The other presupposition—our neutrality—is more subtly deceptive; it’s one that I daresay many people don’t even realize they are assuming when they ask the question above. The famous scenario tied to this question is the “man on the island” idea that describes a man who lives and dies never hearing about the sacrifice of Jesus on his behalf. This man had no opportunity to hear the Good News. How could God send him to Hell? This is where it is helpful to look at the rest of John 3, particularly verses 18 and 36.

In verse 18, Jesus explains to Nicodemus that “Whoever believes in him [Jesus, the Son of God, who came into the world to save us], is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (ESV). Did you catch that? Those who do not believe in the work Jesus did on their behalf—the work of living a perfect, sinless life, dying a criminal’s death as an innocent, and rising victoriously from the dead to return to His throne in Heaven—are “condemned already.” God does not look at their lives and make a decision to “send” them to hell. They are already destined to hell from the beginning because they have inherited the sin-nature from their ancestors and are thus unworthy to be in communion with God.

The second part of verse 36 says, “Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (emphasis added, ESV). From this, we see that God’s wrath is pointed toward us from the beginning of our lives. We are all destined for eternal separation from God because He is infinitely holy and we are not. He is not cruel in allowing us to receive the punishment we deserve; He is just. And it is evidence of His great love for us that He provides an opportunity for us to escape that eternal punishment and to enjoy eternal fellowship and closeness with Him. He provided this opportunity without compromising His justice by taking our punishment on Himself on the Cross. And all we must do to receive this gift is to forsake our wrongs (repent) and believe in Jesus. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life” (John 3:36a, ESV). Have you believed in Jesus and received the forgiveness of God, or are you living under His wrath?

Each of us is walking toward the grave, and the idea that we naturally stand neutral before God is a myth.  On the other side of the grave we will be faced with either intimate face-to-face relationship with the loving, good, just God or eternal separation from Him.

Which end is awaiting you?

P.S. If you want to know more about how you can be right with God, feel free to message me.

The Perfect Peace of Present Tense

Lately I’ve been pondering a specific element of God’s nature—His immutability, i.e. the fact that who He is does not change. And as I was thinking about putting my ponderings into a blogpost, this past Sunday we sang a song in church that touches on the same idea. (Funny how God does that a lot.)

The song is called “Great I Am,” and, as I have had to explain to those hearing it who are unfamiliar with the Bible, when we sing it we are not exclaiming how great each of us is. Instead, we are singing one of the names of God—I AM—and not just any name, but the name He used to identify Himself to Moses and the people of Israel.

It’s best to look right at the verses themselves in Exodus 3:13-14 (ESV). We find Moses at the burning bush, where God has just told him to go back to Egypt (from where he has fled because he murdered an Egyptian) and to confront Pharaoh and to lead the people out of slavery:

Then Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you,” and they ask me, “What is His name?” what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

This name, perhaps more than any other, best communicates God’s immutable nature. Incidentally, it is also a great example of why studying grammar is incredibly helpful in understanding Scripture, but that’s a blogpost for another day. We will touch on grammar a little bit here, though, because this name of God is in the form of a subject (I) and a verb (am), and the type of verb is important.

‘Am’ is the first-person present tense of what’s called a “be verb” (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been). This just means that it is a verb someone uses to describe his current state of being. Often, we follow ‘am’ with some sort of description (a predicate adjective), such as “I am happy” or “I am tall.” But here, God just turns the subject and verb combo into a name. “I AM WHO I AM,” period. And again, “I AM has sent me.” In other words, God just is.

Unlike us humans who can say, “I was short, but now I am tall” or “I was blind, but now I see,” God does not need the past tense to describe His essence. There is nothing God used to be that He is not now. This point is reiterated in the same conversation with Moses when God says, “This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations (Ex. 3:15b, ESV).” In other words, He is still I AM. Forever extends forward and backward for eternity. God is still the same being He has always been and always will be. He is always I AM.

In the New Testament, we see that the same is said of Jesus, giving us one of the many indications that Jesus is God. The writer of Hebrews writes plainly, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8, ESV). And when Jesus was arrested leading up to His crucifixion, His declaring “I am he” was powerful enough to make an entire group of people fall to the ground (John 18:4-6). Jesus, being God, is also I AM and always will be.

So why does all of this matter to us? As believers in Jesus, it’s important at the most basic level because understanding the unchanging nature of God helps us know Him better. And knowing Him better helps us love Him better and enriches our relationship with Him. But it’s also important because His immutability gives us complete confidence in Him, His Word, His work, and His promises. 

We don’t have to worry that what we read of Him in Scripture may not be true anymore. We don’t have to be concerned that God might no longer be able to finish the work that He has begun in us of making us more like Christ. We don’t have to be afraid that God might have ceased to be loving or just or gracious or kind or sovereign. He is still all of those things because He is I AM, the God who never changes. In short, we have a present-tense God, and there is perfect peace to be found in that truth.

PC: Keri-Lynn Paulson. Used with permission.

An Exercise in “Perhaps”

God has revealed Himself to us in Scripture, but He has not revealed every detail of His sovereign plan. This is why we must be careful in pronouncing a specific purpose behind His actions. As we’ve discussed in a previous post, sometimes He gives us the “why” in Scripture, but many times in our lives we are left to wonder. And as implied in another post, we are best advised to couch our ideas about God’s intentions in specific events with “perhaps.”

What follows is an exercise in speculation. What I am about to propose, I have absolutely no evidence for. In other words, I could be completely wrong. But that’s why I’m starting with “perhaps.”

Before we begin, though, let’s build up to our moment of speculation with some things we do know.

Throughout Scripture, God uses created things to explain higher truths. He uses the physical to illuminate the spiritual. Whether it be through similes, metaphors, analogies, parables, or anthropomorphisms, God helps our finite brains grasp truths about His infinite self through things that we are familiar with. Bread, water, light, sheep, shepherds, trees, birds, crops, weeds, wages, invitations, the justice system, money--these are just the examples off the top of my head that God uses in the Bible to help us understand realities about ourselves, Himself, and our relationship to Him.

And this practice is often lauded and looked to as an example of how we ourselves can teach—with illustrations that people will understand. Look at what Jesus did, people will say. He stepped into our world, and used the things that were there to “speak our language.”

This idea isn’t necessarily incorrect, but it implies a sort of reactionary element of Jesus’ ministry and even of God’s working in the Old Testament, i.e. Jesus came to earth and looked around for something that would be a good illustration of what He was wanting to communicate, or God found something that the prophets would understand and decided to use it in His revelation to them.

But God is not reactionary. He is all-knowing and is outside of time.

Now that we’ve got all of that laid out, let’s get to our point of speculation…

Perhaps part of God’s intention in creating these things in the first place was to provide a means of revealing to us truths about His character and His realm.

What if God created eagles to show us how he gently cares for His children? (see Deut. 32:11)

What if God created sheep not only to provide wool for clothing and blankets (and in some cases meat) but also so that we would have an understanding of what total dependency (and stupidity) look like and would thus recognize how much we are dependent and stupid and how much we need a good, kind Shepherd? (see Psalm 23; John 10)

What if God created fish not only to provide food but also to give us a frame of reference for what it means to draw others toward the kingdom of God? (see Matt. 4:19)

What if God created light so that we would know there was something better than darkness? (see John 12:46)

And--this one might be harder to swallow--what if God allowed slavery to exist partly so that we would see the horror of bondage and recognize our terrible plight and the beauty of our Redeemer? (see Titus 3:3-7; Hebrews 2:14-15; Romans 8:15)

Or what if he designed infants to need milk before solid food so that we could see that new believers need patient discipling? (see 1 Cor. 3:2; Heb. 5:12-13; 1 Pet. 2:2)

Then, instead of thinking of Jesus as stepping into our world and using what happened to be there, it’s more like Jesus entered into His world and revealed Himself through His creation that He had put there all along.

Al Mohler in his new book, The Prayer that Turns the World Upside Down, points to Moses’s words in Deuteronomy 8:3 to show “that God designed physical needs [e.g. in this case, hunger] to point to our deeper spiritual needs. Our need for daily physical sustenance is a faint echo of our daily need of spiritual sustenance and satisfaction from God” (p. 117). This verse is one of the cases where God does reveal the “why”:

“He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” (Deut. 8:3, NIV)

If God uses the physical to point to the spiritual, then perhaps He conceived creation itself with this purpose in mind. 

Again, these “what ifs” are pure speculation. I do not know the mind of God apart from what He has revealed in His Word. But I do know that He is sovereign, creative, and love itself. So if He did design and create parts of this world for the “future” purpose of using them to demonstrate His goodness and His love for us, I wouldn’t in the least be surprised.

Source: Mohler, R. Albert, Jr. The Prayer that Turns the World Upside Down: The Lord’s Prayer as a Manifesto for Revolution, Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2018.

Lessons from Literature: Jumping to Conclusions while God’s Not Done (The Baron’s Apprenticeship)

We’re returning to George MacDonald’s trilogy for another literary lesson (see this post for the previous one), but this time the golden nugget comes from the third book, The Baron’s Apprenticeship. And this time, the goodness is delivered via a character’s mouth. We’ll get right to it and join Barbara as she is recounting a conversation she had with the curate, Thomas Wingfold:  

Mr. Wingfold said that it was not fair, when a man had made something for a purpose, to say it was not good before we knew what his purpose with it was. “I don’t even like my wife to look at my poems before they’re finished,” he said. “But God can’t hide away his work till it is finished, as I do my verses, and we ought to take care what we say about it. God wants to do something better with people than people think” (p. 95).

The truth and accompanying implications here, stated another way, are these: 1) God does things with a purpose; 2) God’s purpose in a given situation is not usually apparent to us at the outset; 3) we should avoid jumping to conclusions about our circumstances, assuming we know His purpose, and judging Him and our circumstances according to those assumptions. As these thoughts were simmering in my mind, I came across several Psalms that help us look deeper into this idea.

In Psalm 105, the psalmist is recounting the history of Israel from Abraham to the exodus from Egypt and return to the Promised Land. In the middle of the psalm, we read, “When he [God] summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread, he had sent a man ahead of them […]” (v. 16-17a, ESV*).  Here we see God’s preparation for His people, years before they ever knew a famine was coming. What a beautiful, good thing!

But in the rest of verse 17, we find an unexpected ending: “When he summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread, he had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph who was sold as a slave.” So wait, our good God provided a means of survival for His people, but He did it by allowing a man to become a slave? You got it.

I think it’s safe to say that we can all agree that slavery is bad. And being kidnapped by your brothers and sold to foreigners isn’t something we would call “good.” Yet, Joseph himself acknowledged that God’s hand was in his slavery. He told his brothers, “And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God,” (Genesis 45:7-8a). He later told them, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20). Very clearly, Joseph understood that what seemed like a bad situation was actually a good one. But likely, he had doubts when he was in prison in a foreign land, having been unjustly accused after having been sold into slavery.

Joseph’s story is probably the most common illustration for the idea that what looks like something bad can actually be something good, but that shouldn’t make it any less potent. And when we combine it with Thomas Wingfold’s admonition to avoid judging things as “not good” prematurely, it becomes even more thought-provoking. What would have happened if Joseph had insisted that God had sent this flood of horrible circumstances upon him and therefore couldn’t be relied upon much less worshipped? What would have happened if he had hardened his heart to God because he judged God’s purpose to be against him instead of for him? How often are we guilty of doing just that?

In other Psalms, we see this idea again, that God uses bad to bring about good. Psalm 66:11-12 reads, “You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs; you let men ride over our heads; we went through the fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.” Notice God is the one doing the action here. God is the one bringing them into the net; God is the one laying a burden on them—and not just any burden, a crushing burden; God is the one letting them be ridden over. The verse prior to these tells us that God did these things to test and try His people; in other words, God put them through challenging times to refine them for their ultimate good.

Are we comfortable and confident enough in our faith to accept that God sometimes puts us in painful, difficult, even crushing situations? Do we believe in a God that is big enough to redeem evil and use it for good? In these verses, God is the one inflicting the “negative” things on His people, but He is also the one bringing them out of those things into a peaceful place where they can flourish. His purposes were sure all along, even though the process might have obscured them from view.

Elsewhere, the psalmist writes, “You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again; from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again” (Psalm 71:20). Again we see that God is the one making him experience trouble, but that God is also the one who brings back to life what has been crushed. God can send someone to the lowest of lows and then bring them up again.

In all of these cases, what is important to note is that God is not cruel in allowing bad to happen to us. In our finite existence, it can seem that sad and painful circumstances are always and forever bad, but in God’s infinite reality in which we live, where His ways are far above our understanding, His good purposes are always at work and will always prevail. As the psalmist testifies, “The works of his hands are faithful and just” (Psalm 111:7a). We must be careful, then, that we don’t unjustly accuse our all-wise God of cruelty or callousness simply because we cannot see the bigger picture or all of the details of His eternal plan.

Because we know who He is from His Word, we can trust Him completely—even in the midst of crushing burdens that weigh us down, grief that knocks our breath away, and pain that doesn’t relent. He is in control. And He is good. I can’t think of a better way to conclude than to revisit Thomas Wingfold’s words. May they sink into your soul, challenging and encouraging you as they have me.

Mr. Wingfold said that it was not fair, when a man had made something for a purpose, to say it was not good before we knew what his purpose with it was. “I don’t even like my wife to look at my poems before they’re finished,” he said. “But God can’t hide away his work till it is finished, as I do my verses, and we ought to take care what we say about it. God wants to do something better with people than people think.”

Source: MacDonald, George (Phillips, Michael, ed.) The Curate of Glaston. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1986.

*All Scripture is quoted from the English Standard Version