Sometimes good happens despite all our best efforts. This is the fact of history because God Himself intervenes and works things around for His own purposes. The Scripture says that God works all things for the good of those who are His, for those who love Him.

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

The fact is, God works things out for the good of all people. Granted, a lot of evil is permitted in our world. In the very beginning, we opened the door to such evil and to all kinds of darkness when our very first parents decided to take the advice of the devil. God had given clear and simple guidelines for their preservation and success. But they chose to hearken, to stop and listen, to the voice of deception. And being deceived, they fell from God’s highest plan for humanity: sinless life and endless joy.

Isn’t that the story of every generation? Just when we as human beings are on the verge of something truly good, then we decide to take a side road, an alternate path. Instead of cooperation and peace for all, we choose war. Instead of learning and growing in wisdom, we choose stupidity and self destruction. We throw our own children into the fires of our own self-centered greed and ambitions.

Even so, God cares about us all. He has never, in all the judgments heaped upon fallen humanity, removed us from His own great heart. He loves us, and because he loves us He forgives and reconciles and rescues. All anyone ever has to do is ask.

Admitting our sin is often a very difficult thing. For us it is often a matter of pride, of ego. This letting go of our determined self ruin often seems, for us, like a surrender and failure. It is indeed a surrender but hardly a failure. For when we turn to God in simple honesty of heart, admitting what both parties already know, we immediately find grace and salvation and newness of life.

When we choose to willingly participate in God’s plan, good things suddenly appear, often right out of the very ashes of our own self destruction. Jesus Christ intervenes to give us genuine life — the very life and song and joy of God’s own Holy Spirit. We then see for ourselves the truth about God’s grace.

The simple fact is, God is more than merciful to sinners. God is able to grant a new day in even the darkest midnight of despair. This is God’s amazing grace that inspired the famous song by John Newton centuries ago. God’s grace is just as powerful and just as amazing today as it was back then.
Jesus is the one and only real hope for humankind. Jesus is the one true hope of every ruined family, and every human soul. Surrendering to Jesus is a surrender to life itself. It’s like being born from a dark womb of eternal despair into a bright new world of laughter and singing, and dances of joy, and a living hope.

What good can come from any dark day? More good than is humanly possible to imagine. There is no boundary to God’s goodness or grace for even the worst human sinner. There is no end to it or ceiling to it. It is forever expanding, extending endlessly beyond all infinity and time and eternity.

Does this sound like mere hyperbole? I assure you it is not. If anything, I am understating the power and effect and greatness of God’s grace. Because I am a human being, I cannot see or understand it all. The truth of God’s love and power and compassion for people like you and me is something that only He Himself can fully grasp or state perfectly.

I am therefore well within the mark when I say that the goodness and grace of God cannot be contained by all eternity and all infinity. The good God has in store for those who place their trust in Him will simply never end.

And that, my friend, is just the beginning.

“But as it is written, ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.’ ”
(1 Corinthians 2:9)

Jim