Is God Good When Life Hurts? A Quiet Word for the Hard Days
It’s a fair question.
Anyone who has watched a parent decline, sat in a waiting room with bad news, or buried someone they loved has thought it. Is God good? Still? Right now? When this is what life feels like?
The honest answer is yes. But the honest answer is also that the yes only goes down when somebody you trust hands it to you slowly.
So let me hand it to you slowly.
Goodness is not the absence of pain
We’ve been taught, somewhere along the way, that a good God would not let it hurt. That’s not what the Bible promises. The Bible promises that a good God will be with us when it hurts (Psalm 23:4), that He will not waste what we walk through (Romans 8:28), and that He will one day wipe every tear from our eyes (Revelation 21:4).
God’s goodness is not measured by your circumstances. It’s measured by His cross.
He did not save us from pain. He stepped into ours.
Spafford in the wave
Horatio Spafford lost four daughters when their ship sank in the Atlantic in 1873. He boarded the next ship to meet his grieving wife. When the captain showed him the spot on the ocean where his girls had drowned, Spafford went back to his cabin and wrote, “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.”
He did not write that song because it stopped hurting. He wrote it because, in the middle of the hurt, he still knew the One holding him.
That is what goodness looks like in the dark.
Read the Take 5 episode on Horatio Spafford.
Havergal in the song
Frances Havergal lived most of her life in poor health. She buried friends. She had every reason to write bitter. Instead she wrote, “Take my life and let it be, consecrated, Lord, to Thee.” She believed the goodness of God was not a feeling. It was a person. And the person was always there.
People who have suffered well are not people who hurt less. They’re people who stopped letting the hurt have the final word about who God is.
Read the Take 5 episode on Frances Havergal.
For today
If you are in a hard season, hear this carefully.
God is good even when you cannot feel it. His goodness is not on trial. Your hurt is real and He is not asking you to pretend otherwise. He is with you in the room. He is closer than your next breath. And the same God who walked Spafford home and gave Havergal her song will walk you through this too.
You don’t have to fake “I’m fine.” You can say “this hurts” and “God is good” in the same sentence. The Christian life has always been able to hold both.
One small step
Read Psalm 34 today. Slowly. Out loud if you can.
If you’d like a longer hand to hold for the harder weeks, the free 7-day “When Worry Won’t Let Go” devotional was written for exactly these days.
And if you missed it, Tuesday’s post answered the question one room over from this one: Does God Care About Me? Goodness and nearness are the same hand.
Keep looking up!
Pastor Rodney
Related devotionals
- What Is Costly Discipleship?
- Where Do We Go When Life Wears Us Out?
- Forgiveness: What Ephesians 4:32 Actually Means
- The Lift Up Your Day podcast
Books that go deeper
- A Certain Kind of Heart — for the seasons God is shaping something quiet in you.
- Make It Rain — for the seasons you need to learn to pray honestly.
- Who Is Jesus, Really? — for the seasons you want to know who is holding you.