Life is Good – Sunday, February 03, 1985
Often our lives are so full of the bounty of this world that it is easy for us to say, “Life is good.” We have our homes and our families, our employments, and opportunities. There is work for us to do and time in which to do it; there are rewards for our labors, and there is the love of those we love.
But, while we work, others are unemployed. While we eat, others go hungry. While we enjoy the love and comfort of our families, others see their families suffer and cannot be comforted.
So, life may be good for many, but the words of the hymn “Arise and Come” are also true: “Sin and sorrow fill each breath.”
How then can we say, “Life is good,” when for so many it appears not to be? Partly it is because we exaggerate our own pleasure to define the world. We see life mostly as it applies to us—to our circumstances.
But God’s vision is not an exaggeration from such limited experience. He sees the world, He sees the pleasure and pain in it, the righteousness, and the sin. He suffers for the suffering of the least of us. He knows that at all times misery and wickedness are present in the world, that somewhere they afflict His children, that somewhere they destroy the righteousness His word has established.
And yet, God does not despair; rather, He sends life into the world, because the Divine Truth is that life is the gift of God, and, therefore, good. And, in spite of all we do to deny its goodness, in spite of all the suffering our sins cause, life is good.
Not good because it is easy; not good because we are happy or ignorant of the suffering of others. It is good because it allows us to walk the earth, to live our lives patterned after Christ’s example, and through that example to discover the goodness in ourselves.
Though sin and sorrow fill each breath, yet life is good. Because God gave it, as He gave His son to guarantee that sin and sorrow ultimately are overcome.
February 03, 1985
Broadcast Number 2,894