God is good

What does it mean that God is good? Does that mean that God gives me a nice place to live? Healthy kids and a healthy life? Yummy food and good weather? A good job? Obviously, we know that God is good in so many ways but in the day to day, my happiness or unhappiness seems to revolve around those types of things.

I've recently returned to a personal study on the attributes of God (that has been on again and off again for several years) and was looking at the goodness of God today. God's goodness can be defined as follows:

• God is the sum of all that is wholesome, beneficial and beautiful, the final standard of good and the source of all good and all blessings. All that God is and does is perfectly kind and benevolent.

That means that every inconvenience in life comes from a perfectly good God. Every difficulty at work or home or church is a perfect blessing from a perfectly wholesome and beneficial God. Every trial and tragedy is an act of perfect kindness and benevolence. Every one.

Why is that? It's because every worldly good thing is not meant to be the object of our affection but is meant to point us to the true sum and source of all that is good. So when we lose something good in this world or are faced with a lack of goodness in some situation, God is kindly reminding us that He is absolute good. In fact, He is the highest good. There is nothing better than Him.

And God has proven His goodness toward us in giving us Christ so that we might experience the perfect sum of all that is wholesome, beneficial and beautiful. 1 Peter 3:18 For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God.

Isn't God amazing?