Chopping vegetables for dinner, I twice caught a stray mushroom before it rolled from the cutting board off the counter.
You’re so good to me, God! I thought.
Somewhere else in my mind, I was thinking about the apartment rental application I had put in that morning. Please be good to me, and let them accept my application.
—As if there are times when God isn’t good.
My thoughts went to a YouTube performance I’d seen a few weeks earlier of the Newsboys singing “Blessed Be Your Name.”
Blessed be Your name
In the land that is plentiful,
Where Your streams of abundance flow,
Blessed be Your name.
Blessed be Your name
When I’m found in the desert place,
Though I walk through the wilderness,
Blessed be Your name.
God is good and fair in happy times and hard times. His goodness shows both in what He gives and what He withholds, what He allows and what He denies. This is one of those “a lot in one” concepts. With this attitude, you can’t help but also experience increased joy, faith, peace, and gratitude.
I hope that reflecting on this familiar truth and the message of this song will help it to go a little deeper into my heart—more than a convicting phrase or a moving song that comes to mind now and then, but part of who I am.
King David practiced this: “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.” 1
James understood it: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” 2 (God is not given to being moody when it comes to answering prayer or acting on my behalf.)
Job immortalized it for faith generations to come: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” 3
I got the mushroom.
I might get the apartment. Or not.
Either way, God is good.