Faith

If you don't have anything "good" to say…

Good things, Good times

Each time God made something in the beginning, He followed it by saying in the Word: “And God saw that it was good.” It only took God two chapters to say: “It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” And so Eve is made. However, things seem to get increasingly frustrating for God and through His own choice words (Gen. 3:14-19), He banishes them from the Garden of Eden. Cain and Able come along and do not seem to get too far either, without God saying some more “good” things! (Gen. 4:9-16)

The wipe out

My family gets a good laugh out of watching “Wipe Out” on t.v. where a series of hard obstacles hover over water. The people have a long introduction that describes their good strengths and why they will make the challenge (mainly because of a year’s worth of practice and training)! When the starting sound is made, these optimistic people take their stance with a big grin as if they have already won. One out of many make it to the end. All the others are “wiped out” with a very surprised expression on their faces. It’s so sad that it is funny. In just a couple seconds, these strong, amazing athletes are down. Then they are greeted with the truth.

Noah must have had a similar experience although not so funny as he watched from the ark he built. Noah didn’t have great things to say when God “was grieved that He had made man on the earth and His heart was filled with pain” because of man’s wicked thoughts. God said “I will wipe mankind from the face of the earth…but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord…” God took an account of Noah’s righteous, blameless ways among the violence. I have to be honest and tell others that I may not have been a Noah, but hopefully would’ve at least made it onto the ark like his family did. I definitely don’t want to live a life of denial (like all the others who were wiped out after thinking Noah to be crazy) from the truth of what God’s got going on! Noah was not just an animal lover though the Bible says “all the animals came to him” lol. He really had to listen to the good, hard things God spoke. If he took God’s words as pessimistic, deciding to ignore them, we wouldn’t be here!

God is Good

There is no way some things are going to sound “good” coming from others or even from God. But if it is Good, it will always be suitable for use, honest, upright, showing good sense of judgement, better than average. This is the definition of good! This is what/who God is. All the way from Genesis to Psalms, to 1 Timothy and 1 Peter….it’s all GOOD because it’s all suitable for us in some way. We shouldn’t go around closing our ears to things that sound somewhat negative or hard. It may still be good and useful to us and we ought to find a useful thing out of it.

Colors of Love

After the flood, “The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma of Noah’s burnt offering” and he said in His heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. Never again will there be a flood to destroy the whole earth and cut off all life. This is a sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds to remind me of my promise.” After living through personal floods, we should have some good things to say… Sometimes I wonder how many good people there will be in heaven because of their honest, upright, better than average accepting approach to God loving them the way He does; but I also wonder how many shocked people there will be in hell because of the good words we aren’t saying to them. If you have good, honest, useful things to say, by all means, say them. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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