Working for Good

Clearly, if God is working for us, it is going to be for good.  Romans 8:28 says it well, "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose."  There are all kinds of things in our life.  Some of them we choose.  Some seem to choose us.  Some bring us joy and some bring us great sorrow.  Some are easy.  Some are hard.  Some are full of life and some seem empty of life.  There are a lot of different things which touch our life.  Sometimes we are beset by more than one difficulty and sometimes there is joy even in the midst of the thing we would not choose.    

What Paul tells us in this inspired word is that God takes the sum of the things which are touching us and uses them to bring good into our lives and into the lives of those around us.  It is as if God swoops up all the circumstances of our life, stirs them around, and then uses them for purposes we never thought possible.  In cancer treatment rooms it is not uncommon to see one sufferer reaching out to bring some hope to another simply because they have been through an experience which brought pain and devastation in their lives.  We are often able to be a helper and a comforter to another not because we have read about their suffering in a book, but because we have experienced it.     

Whenever we are tempted to think that some dark moment is too dark, or that some injustice is too great, or some pain too great for anything redemptive to come from it, we need only stop and look toward the cross of Jesus for a moment.  There the worst that humanity and evil had to give was poured out upon the Innocent Holy One; yet, even though the day ended with an apparent victory on the side of the darkness, we know such was not true.  The Light which has always shined prevailed in that darkness and through the darkness brought to each of us an assurance that good prevails and wins the battle.