goodness

Training Our Eyes to See the Good

Training Our Eyes to See the Good
Photo by Andrew Ly on Unsplash

 

Have you ever played a game driving where you look for a certain color car? Like you say, “Let’s count all the blue cars.” (this may or may not be something only parents trying to entertain young children can relate to).

When you start looking, suddenly they’re all you see. Try it. Choose a color, and look for it around you. You notice it where you didn’t realize it was before. It’s everywhere, right?

I’ve realized gratitude works the same way.

The Practice of Gratitude

As we come upon Thanksgiving, I wonder if we are struggling to find things to be grateful for. It’s been a wild year. It would be so easy to focus on the negative, on what we lack, on what we’ve missed.

And gratitude is something we often do when we feel like it, or when it’s expected. Like after the giving of a gift, or when someone lends a helping hand. (Are people giving gifts right now? Anybody helping someone else in person?) It’s not something we always think to do.

But I’m also learning that gratitude is something we have to practice. It has to become a liturgy in our lives, something that flows out of us like breath.

And when we do, when we start looking for the good in our lives, we start to see it. We’re training our eyes to see God at work. It’s not that He hasn’t been there all along. We just weren’t seeing it.

This fall our pastor led us through the book of Ruth. There’s a point in the story where the author says, “she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz.” It got us talking about this phrase, “It so happened.” We say it sometimes. But really, does anything just so happen? 

Those “it so happened” moments are God. We need to train our eyes to recognize that fact.

Training Our Eyes to See the Good

So when we make a habit of saying “thank you, Jesus,” about the good gifts in our lives, we begin to see that He is at work all around us. We recognize that those “it so happened” moments didn’t just so happen. God never stops doing good to us.

For me, it helps to start at a granular level. I have breath in my lungs today. There’s a roof over my head. I have clothes on my back and food in my belly. Every one of those things is a gift of grace I did not earn or deserve.

When we start there, we see good everywhere. We see it in a timely text from a friend, a blessedly cooler day here in central Florida (it’s November for Pete’s sake!), in satisfying work. It’s our kid getting through another day of online classes, a moment of feeling normal in the middle of a pandemic, seeing a familiar face on a call.

There’s so much we take for granted every day, so many ways God is showing up and giving to us, and our souls are blessed when we acknowledge it. We are reminded that we are not alone-He is with us and He is for us. Always.

God’s goodness is the blue car we can see everywhere if we train our eyes to look.

“Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men! For He satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness.” Psalm 107:8-9

Related posts:

Panning for Gold: What to Do When Gratitude Is Hard

Holding Grief and Gratitude Together 

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It’s Going to Be Okay

It's Going to Be OK
Photo by Chungkuk Bae on Unsplash

“It’s going to be okay.”

I recently told my husband that he can no longer say this to me when I am discouraged, anxious, or forecasting the demise of some aspect of my life (as I am apt to do at times).

I’ve always hated when people say, “It’s going to be okay.” I want to slap them.

“How do you know?” I wonder.

How, in the middle of this really stinky moment in my life can you offer this platitude? (Trust me, I’ve had it offered to me at really, really stinky moments).

But lately, I feel like God keeps telling me exactly that, “It’s going to be okay.”

Really, God? Is it really going to be okay? How can you say that? When I’m sitting here waiting to hear the news that could be life-changing, it doesn’t feel like it will be okay if it doesn’t turn out the way I hope. When we’re staring down disappointment, broken dreams, loss, shalom shattered, sometimes it doesn’t feel like it will ever be okay.

But He repeats: It’s going to be okay. Here’s how I know.

It’s going to be okay. Why?

This past week at church, we talked about Jesus raising Lazarus. When Lazarus falls ill, they send for Jesus by saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” I don’t send for people that way, but maybe I should, like, “Erik, the wife whom you love needs a foot massage.”

But that’s what defined their relationship. And just to be clear, John reiterates it in verse 5, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” Ah, so it wasn’t just them thinking he loved them. He really did. Our speaker pointed out how important it was to preface the story this way because, in the middle of the not okay that was coming, it would be easy to doubt.

It’s easy for us too.

He loves us

It’s going to be okay because He loves us. That’s the anchor where we sink our souls when life doesn’t look the way we feel it should. The God who loves us more than life is in it.

So it’s going to be okay. But not just okay. It’s going to be good.

Oh, but not necessarily good in the way we think it should be good. And that’s the problem.

The problem is that my idea of good is so focused on my comfort and happiness, focused on tangible, temporal things. In my world, the news is always what I hoped it would be. Jesus shows up in my time and my ways.

He is good

But It’s going to be good because He is good, and His purposes toward us are for our good. He is focused on our character and sanctification, on intangible, eternal things. He shows up in His time and His ways, that are so much better than ours.

His good is so much bigger. It’s a good grounded in the deepest love we can imagine, always working on our behalf.

It’s good in the way that Jesus didn’t just save Lazarus from illness, he raised him from the dead. That’s a better story.

He’s writing a good story

And that’s what I also know. It’s going to be okay because God is a good author. He is a good storyteller. He is writing a good story for us. And the story ends well.

We won’t see them as good stories if we hold too tightly to our idea of good. In my version of life, disappointment, broken dreams, and loss are not part of the story. But what kind of story would it be if everything was perfect?

A boring story, that’s what. The best stories have conflict. They have twists and turns and nail biting, “What will happen?” moments. And God’s writing the best story for each of us.

The stories God writes are stories of redemption. You can’t have redemption if you don’t have shalom shattered. You can’t have resurrection without death.

This week is a holy reminder that it’s going to be okay. Easter demonstrates His love for us. It is a testimony to God working good on our behalf. The story is one of triumph over the greatest enemy. He made everything okay.

We say this Friday is good, but it didn’t feel good to the disciples. It felt like the end of all their hopes. Disappointment. Broken dreams. Loss. It didn’t feel like it was going to ever be okay.

They didn’t know Sunday was coming. But God knew.

He knew that it was all for love. It was the greatest story ever written. All for us.

So when I slip into bed and anxious thoughts nag at my brain, I call to mind instead His voice telling me, “It’s going to be okay.” As I think about our son heading off to college this summer, and all the unknowns that go with that, He whispers, “It’s going to be okay.” I sigh my latest dilemma to my husband, and I hear him catch himself before he says it, but I nod, and say, “You’re right. It’s going to be okay.” 

When life feels like Friday, it’s going to be okay, because Sunday’s coming.

He loves us. Everything is working for our good. The story ends well. Maybe not today, or tomorrow. Maybe not until we see Him. But it’s going to be okay.

Related posts:

What to Do When It’s Hard 

This Kind of Jesus 

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Are You Looking for God in the Right Places?

Looking for God in the Right Places
Photo by Chase Clark on Unsplash

One morning last week my husband told me there was a hawk in the backyard. I glanced out the kitchen window and observed nothing. Later, he came in again and asked, “Did you see the hawk?”

“No,” I replied, assuming it flew away.

“It’s still there. It’s been there all morning.”

I looked out again, scanning the trees. No hawk. Maybe he was blending in with the trees. Erik led me upstairs to our 2nd floor deck and told me to look with binoculars. “Ah,” I thought, “it’s probably way back in the trees and that’s why I couldn’t see it.”

Nope. That hawk was right in the middle of our backyard, pecking away at bugs in the grass. Turns out I couldn’t see it because I wasn’t looking in the right place. I wasn’t looking hard enough.

There’s so much we miss if we aren’t looking for it.

That hawk, on the other hand, wasn’t missing a thing. Between pecks, he hopped up on the soccer goal and stayed alert, scanning the ground. Every minute or so he jumped down with lightning speed and pulled up a frog or a worm. He was focused, and it served him well.

I want to be like that hawk. I don’t want to miss what God is doing because I’m not looking for it. I don’t want to hold so tightly to what I believe his goodness should look like that I miss his actual blessings. I don’t want to be someone who loses hope, or doesn’t expect God to work, simply because he isn’t conforming to my plans.

Last spring, I spoke with a good friend about how easy it is for me to do this though. I have been in a long season of loneliness, brought on by a number of factors mostly beyond my control. While I have cried out to God to ease this pain, it seems he has been
silent on the issue.

But when I stop and look harder, I see ways that God is providing relationships for me. My life may not look like an episode of Friends (and let’s face it-whose does??), but I have people. Yes, it’s hard to grab the quality time I would love to have with them, but I am thankful for the moments God does give me. It might be a last minute serendipitous lunch with a friend, an unexpected phone call, a canceled appointment that gives me sudden time with someone else. It’s not so much that I am alone-I am simply so focused on what I think a lack of loneliness looks like that I miss what he is giving me.

That hawk, it appears, has made our backyard his home. He’s learned there’s life here for him, and where to look for it. He trusts that this place will provide for him.

You and I, we know where to look.

Life is here, being given to us day after day. He is with us, giving us what we need. Sometimes it’s in ways we wouldn’t expect, so we miss it. Let’s pry our hands from the preconceived notions we have of how life should be so we can grab hold of what he is offering. He’s at work. We just have to search in the right places. 

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart.” Jer. 29:13

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Having Hope in a New Season

It’s September. The pumpkin spice lattes are back, and the Halloween candy is out, which is how I know it’s autumn (Orlando weather doesn’t really give me any clues). Can I just point out that if you’re buying Halloween candy now, you’re either a great planner AND highly disciplined, or let’s face it-it’s never going to last until October 31. Just sayin’.

It’s exciting to see the fall décor, the warm colors of sweaters and pants hanging on the racks, the everything scented cinnamon. Bring on the new season.

New seasons bring exciting new possibilities, but they also bring the unknown. They bring “I’m not sure how to do this” and “what will happen?” and most of, “will this be good?”

It’s been several years now since we moved back to the U.S. from 13 years overseas. We returned to many familiars, but also so many unknowns. Overseas, we were deeply known, deeply rooted, deeply seen. Here, we had yet to see how God would provide in similar ways.

Now, I scroll through my text messages and I see name after name of people I did not know then. I have my favorite places, my favorite things (the library delivers, friends. To. My. House).

I, who dread meet and greets, linger after church because there are so many people I love and want to see. Our roots are not as deep as they were in the last season, but they are sinking. We are claiming ground here.

And He saw it all before it ever came to be.

A year or so into our time in Singapore years ago, God gave me this same kind of awareness. I imagined having this kind of conversation with Him when I was hesitant to leave our home and move there,

“Oh but Gina, you’re going to meet Wendy, and Krisi, and Fiona, and so many others. You’re going to have great memories with your kids at the wobbly train park and the zoo and the children’s library. They’re going to talk for years about the Nutella waffles you get at the market. It’s going to be so good!”

Friend, maybe you are in a new season that looms much larger than new latte flavors and décor.

Maybe it’s a new location, a new stage of life, a new role. You can’t see much through the fog right now. You’re wondering if it’s going to be good, if you’ll be known, if you’ll find your place. Remember this:

Every season that is unknown to you is known to God.

God’s got good in store for you. He has people for you. He has prepared moments of laughter and joy. There will be valleys and mountains of growth. Just like I told my kids when we first moved here, “You might just meet your new best friend.”

You might be entering a season of amazing blessing, or it might be your greatest place of transformation. Either way, He knows it. He’s got you.

Each year back, we celebrate another season of life here. We pile the Ebenezer stones and claim the goodness of God in this season He’s given us. We look back and see all that He knew He was going to give us here.

It’s a new season. There’s good to come. He goes ahead, preparing it for you.

“I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.” –Jeremiah 29:11 The Message

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