“God is good all the time, and all the time God is good.”

This typical call-and-response phrase enthusiastically doled out to the congregation on Sunday mornings right after the first round of worship songs were sung always infuriated me in my early church-going days. I hated it. It felt and sounded disingenuous like some Christian-ese that belonged on a mug or fancy journal. I believed in God and I believed He was good, but not all the time and not to me. 

These saccharine, trite Sundays I experienced from a young age into adulthood set me up to believe that if I couldn’t say this phrase with a smile on my face and pretend everything was great then there was something wrong with me. 

During the times I struggled most I saw that my faith was lacking, trials were rife, God was distant, and sin abounded. How could I say God was good all the time? What did “good” mean anyway? In my experience good was fine, acceptable. It definitely wasn’t a word I would use to describe my life of unanswered prayers, trials, and depression. But scripture means something much richer when it calls God good.

“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” -Genesis 1:31

“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” -Psalm 34:8

“Give thanks to the Lord , for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” -Psalm 136:1

If we take the Hebrew word that translates “good” we see and understand these scriptures in a different way than maybe we understand the English definition of good to be. The Bible Project explains the Hebrew word, tov, excellently in this video. 

Tov as an adjective in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance encompasses a wide array of English words such as: beautiful, best, bountiful, cheerful, fair.¹ So we can conclude that what God made He saw as not just good in the English sense but beautiful, complete, the best.

For so long I thought affliction was bad. God causes affliction so therefore God must be bad. Though you cannot physically see it, there is a tremendous thorn in my side, a beast on my back that will not be removed. This thorn is a combination of many things but I can say that it is a torrential downpour of obsessive, negative thoughts and mental anguish I cannot fully explain. Sometimes I can carry this beast. Other days it feels as though it’s carrying me. This beastly thorn wreaks havoc and makes various sizes of waves in my day to day life. I don’t want these waves, I don’t want the thorn, I don’t want the beast. I have asked God to remove it but He does not. 

Sometimes I thought God was good when I didn’t notice the thorn. I thought He was good when good things were happening to me and when I felt some kind of reprieve from my pain. But all the time? No. God being good all the time did not exist in my mind. 

I could not see past my own struggles, trials, and sin to see that goodness isn’t what God does but who God is. I defined His goodness by His gifts, not His character. Gifts come and go. He brings rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike, but Scripture shows us that His goodness never leaves. He is the complete definition of tov. 

What I love about what the Bible Project video says about tov is the explanation it gives about the tree of good and evil. We can choose “to trust God’s wisdom or to discern what is tov on our own terms.” I chose time and time again to trust what I thought was good. I thought it was good to stew in self-hatred for the thorn in my side. I thought it was good to do all the Christian outward duties in hopes of earning a good standing with God.  I thought it was good to turn to anything but God when I was depressed or anxious because He never helped in those situations anyway. When I did what was good in my own eyes I was always disappointed with myself, angry with God, and spiritually stagnant.

It took my stubborn heart and brain a long time to realize this thinking was wrong, but praise God for His patience, mercy, and grace. It was God who showed me — fed me with nourishment from His word — the richness of His goodness and how to dwell in it. 

‘But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. ‘

Lamentations 3:21-25

‘for, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men. ‘

Lamentations 3:32-33

Lamentations is a book of poems about grief for the judgment God has bestowed upon Israel by giving this city into the hands of the Babylonians. These two passages above are right in the middle of the book of Lamentations. We are reminded “that the mercies of God are often hidden and hard to recognize when they are happening. He does ‘cause grief’ (verse 32). He does ‘afflict’ (verse 33). But all this serves another purpose — a merciful purpose — if we trust him.”

In this article, John Piper discusses the mercies of God in his life and in the lives of others. Piper briefly describes a hardship that perfectly sums up the beauty of Lamentations 3:21-33. A husband and wife welcomed a beautiful baby boy into this world only to lose him a mere two minutes later. Unimaginable grief they must’ve felt. Why would God give them a child and then take him away almost immediately? No one knows. But in their grief they trusted in the goodness and mercy of the Lord and named their son Tobaiah which means “God is good.” Toby’s father put it simply and perfectly, “Life is hard and God is good.”

I used to say, “Life is hard so God isn’t always good.”

Now I say, “Life is hard, the thorn has not been removed, and God is good all the time.”

 When I fear I will go back to believing that God isn’t good all the time, I look to the cross. There God didn’t just tell me He was good — He demonstrated it. He did not spare His own Son but willingly gave Him for sinners like me. If I cannot understand my suffering, I can still understand Calvary. The cross reminds me that God’s love is not measured by the ease of my circumstances but by the cost He was willing to pay to redeem me. It is finished, He is tov and He will always be tov. 

My circumstances will be bad sometimes but my God will always be good.

Heavenly Father, I pray for all who are struggling to see Your goodness. Help us all to see past our circumstances to taste and see Your character, Your goodness. You are rich in mercy and compassionate. Fill us with Your Holy Spirit so we may rest in that compassion and goodness. Remind us in our hardest times that You are near and You will never leave. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.

1. https://biblehub.com/hebrew/2896.htm ↩︎