What do you see in this picture?

Here’s another photo I took on my “bored walk”.  I’ve captured an essence of decay.  There are dead leaves, dead stems, a cigarette butt, dry dirt, dead plants, and there in the midst of it stands a perfect flower.  The color attracts your attention almost completely.  It doesn’t seem to fit very well.  It’s a “sight for sore eyes” in an otherwise “eyesore” of a backdrop.

It makes me think of God.

A lot of people I have talked to in the past have thought that God was not so good.  They blame Him for the holocaust, genocide, disease, for not seeing their suffering, for not answering their prayers the way they want Him to, for the threat of “hell”, etc.  But, I’ve found that in coming to understand God more fully that these critiques are based on misunderstandings.  Even in this list of terrible things can be found goodness if one is willing to take the moment to understand God’s explanation of these things.  At least that’s what I’ve found.  So, I can say with no reservation that God is good.  And He’s been good to me.  That is not to say I’ve not experienced suffering, questions, and even doubt at times.

So, what makes God so good?  Well, he is giving life right now to a world that doesn’t deserve it for one thing.  Not only that but He is spending all His energy trying to reveal His goodness to us so that we will see it.  But, how often all we see is the dismal backdrop–the death, the cigarette butts, etc.  I’ve spent a lot of time focusing my eyes on that background.  The decay seems to spill out of the canvas into the heart.  So, I’ve been choosing to try to focus on the one beautiful thing in the picture and I’m enjoying it.  Plus, it’s taking my mind off of porn in the process.  God seems to be good like that!