This Is How We Know

One night last October I slowly moved through my pre-bedtime routine feeling lonely and discouraged. After months of enjoying spiritual refreshment and encouragement, it felt as if busyness, change, and health problems had dried up my insides, leaving them shriveled and brittle.

Anxious to shrug off my despondent thoughts, my mind searched for something to uplift my laden spirit.

I immediately thought of my fiancé, who had blended me blueberry smoothies almost every day we'd seen each other since the onset of my illness five weeks earlier. “An anti-oxidant blast,” he’d say. “We’re going to blast this virus out of your system.”

I felt my soul swell with gratitude for this relationship, this gift from almighty God, and sighed with satisfaction as I asked him, “Why me, Lord? Of all the people in the world, why did you give me this man?”

“Because I want you to know how much I love you.”

His words startled me; I wasn’t expecting him to answer. But his voice like raging waters filled my parched soul.

Almost a year later I am single. The tan line from my engagement ring has faded, but the hopes I had last October—for a life companion and family of my own—have not. I meet them around every bend in the road and see them dance by in every flickering shadow. I feel their poignant prick at my heart daily, sometimes sharp and fierce like a knife plunged into my flesh.

The answer God gave me last October hasn't faded from my heart either.

“Because I want you to know how much I love you.”

I feel his words burn hot like embers, and then I count my recent losses. And as I count I know that God, in his goodness, shows us his love just as much by giving as by taking away. But I can't help but wonder exactly what I mean when I say that there is goodness in the taking.

A few months ago, while bed-ridden and discouraged by my chronic illness, I called the phone number on the back of my computer's external hard drive hoping some techy somewhere could help me set it up. My call was routed to the Dominican Republic where I was helped by a patient Haitian man.

While he and I waited for something to download on my computer I asked him a bit about his life. He described his family, his church, and the day he gave his life to Jesus Christ. Then he told me about the day of the earthquake.

He said he had a nine-year-old little girl who loved Jesus. He said she was full of life but her life was short.

He recounted pulling her limp, cold body out of the earthquake wreckage, and then holding her tiny frame high in the air, his face turned toward the sky as he said, “God is sovereign; he is good; and I will still praise him.”

Like Father Abraham, holding his son up to the altar, this seed of the nations a sacrifice to a good God.

A good God who gives and takes; who gives knowing he will take.

A good God who sometimes, after the taking, gives back: A heaving sigh of relief; tears washed in with laughter; a cry of thanksgiving for a good provision.

But what about when God doesn't return what he's taken?

What can we say of his goodness then?

In my house, whenever we're enjoying particularly fine fare—a bar of swiss chocolate, fresh peach cobbler, a plate of homemade krumkake—my dad is known to pause between bites, food in hand, and say, "Now that is good. That is really good." We always chuckle, and maybe even pass him the rest of the treat, because we know what he means is that whatever he's eating is satisfying and desirable and he'll probably want more.

This is how I have understood goodness.

It is pleasing and welcome.

It doesn’t sear sorrow into our hearts of flesh.

When it became clear that I would need to call off my imminent wedding, my epistemology—or way of knowing what is good and true—was rocked. I found myself wondering how in the world I could know anything with confidence.

I had been so certain God wanted me to date and eventually get engaged to this man. I had recognized his voice, assuring me the budding relationship was his idea. Then I had sensed his leading toward the altar—I had even seen him open doors to provide for our upcoming wedding.

Hadn’t I followed Jesus close enough for long enough to recognize his leading when I saw it? Hadn’t godly friends and even acquaintances marveled at our love story, and blessed our engagement and deemed it God's gracious provision?

I had been so confident; could I have been wrong?

I must have been blinded by emotion, I concluded, reeling from the pain and confusion of the break-up. My hopes and desires must have clouded my thinking, making me believe I had heard God's voice and sensed his leading. Maybe the peace I had was nothing more than the byproduct of hope colliding against hope.

Weeks passed and my doubts snowballed. I revisited old memories, traversing my history to reevaluate every time I thought I had sensed God's direction. What had it felt like? Looked like? On what basis did I ever feel confident I had correctly sensed God's leading?

I felt like I was teetering on the edge of a precipice, about to plummet from my previously sturdy and reliable epistemology into the murky marshes of "not knowing."

Then I had an epiphany.

I realized my problem wasn't my epistemology; it was my assumptions.

I had assumed that God’s goodness wouldn’t allow him to clearly and intentionally guide me to a place of loss and sorrow; that if my life bled into sorrowful shades of gray it was my fault, or the Enemy’s.

In short, I had thought I understood God’s goodness, and had believed that if I held my idea of goodness up to God’s, the two would match.

But when my ring-less hands shakily raised my glowing idea of goodness and placed it alongside God’s, I saw that his Goodness was completely and utterly “other.”

There was no comparison between his and mine.

It was as if I held up a candle to the sunset,

A single note to an orchestral symphony,

A paper doll to a man of flesh.

It was unlike anything my wild imagination could create.

It was the kind of Goodness that smears spit and mud in a man’s eyes to give him eyes that see and heart that lives,

And lets a dear friend Lazarus die young so that he can breathe new life into his rotting body.

A Goodness Who once allowed flippant soldiers to twist nails into the flesh of his only Son so that he could remove the sin twisted into our decaying flesh.

A Goodness who is less concerned about giving us lives we think are good, and instead pours out grace that awakens us to his Goodness.

A Goodness who knows that His glory is our greatest good.

A Goodness that is “other”;

Distinct; Set Apart; Holy.

This goodness that is other has changed the timbre of my days. Now, when deep sadness stirs in my spirit it is accompanied by an unwavering confidence that this sorrowful journey was God’s idea. In his great and holy goodness he gave so that he could take away.  

And he took away so that he could give back. He always gives when he takes, but he gives something “other.”

He dashes hopes so that he can give us a Hope that is stronger than the grave.

He pushes us into valleys of weakness so he can give us his power that sculpted the mountains.

He leads us into deserts of desolation so he can breath Divine consolation into our withered souls.

He removes the Hell from our hearts so he can give us a new Eden.

Because his goodness is not concerned with making bad people good, but dead people alive,

And He is a God whose goodness would make us “other”;

Distinct; set apart; holy.

This week two years ago I toasted to God's goodness with my roommates at the beach. This week one year ago my former fiance and I toasted to God's goodness in the park on our engagement day. Both times I was thanking God for the flickering candle-sized vision of goodness I thought lay in store.

I never dreamed he'd give me a sunset.

This sunset, in all its glory, has temporarily disoriented, burned, and blinded me, and I think this is the nature of holiness. God's holy goodness is not something frail eyes can behold and a dying heart can comprehend. That's why the Apostles Paul and John fell to the ground as though dead when they saw the risen Jesus face to face on the Road to Damascus and the Island of Patmos. But this risen Jesus wants to give us more of his holy and good self because he is our Greatest Good, and so he must give us eyes that can behold his loving face and a heart that lives in him.

But first he must remove our vision of the good life so he can give us his eternal, perfect vision; he must sear the scales off our candle-accustomed eyes and burn the black sin out of our fading hearts. He must make us the kind of creatures whose sturdy souls can delight in his holy goodness. And as he works, our clearing eyes will gradually see and be captivated by the golden light that creeps westward on the enflamed horizon; this radiant light a reminder to our changing hearts that one day we will see a Good and Holy God face to face, and he wants us to be ready for that day. And so he gives, and he takes, and he gives back more than he's taken: he makes us holy.

And this is how we know how much he loves us.

© by scj