Thanks for Goodness? I can easily imagine many of you shaking your heads at me, and saying “Of course, woman. Why ever not?”
I agree that that is how it should be, and it’s my intent to live out the remainder of my life with that focus. However, it’s dangerously easy to fall into the devil’s trap of comparison and the hankering and dissatisfaction it brings.
The Bible is packed with examples for us. At the Red Sea, the Israelites panicked at the approaching Egyptian army. After God and Moses led them through to safety, their praise of God’s deeds quickly soured into complaining. Though God kept their clothes and sandals from wearing out, and fed them fresh manna from heaven six days out of seven, they had the chutzpah to say slavery to the Egyptians was worth being able to eat onions and cucumbers. They groused about Moses’ leadership skills, earning an extra forty years of wandering, and to top it all, once in the promised land, they rejected God’s leadership and protection in favor of a human king.

Thanks for Goodness

Not at all.

As I said in the previous post, goodness as a gift from the Holy Spirit, is to make us reflect God’s character. Goodness is sometimes expressed via generosity as when God sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
It can also take a harsher mode, as when God warned Moses not to expect his Presence when the Israelites would enter Canaan, because otherwise He might destroy them. Then Moses pleaded to know God better, in order to retain favor with Him, and asked to see God’s glory.
God responded: “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, The Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” He cannot be manipulated.
C.S. Lewis expressed this in his famous description of Aslan: “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Thanks for Goodness

It is the tribute we owe.

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If you’ve ever been curious about Heidi’s fiction, there are links to short stories and an anthology on this page.

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