One of my favorite things about the book of Psalms is the room given for biblical complaint. In our modern sensibilities, we waffle between respectfully questioning God for His mysterious ways and raising our fists in anguish and frustration. We know that anger feels wrong, so we fight it. But immediate acceptance seems completely out of reach when the diagnosis is bleak, when the baby won’t come, when the bank account is empty, the job is lost, the loneliness suffocates, the grave has swallowed our loved ones.
It’s a fine line to walk. How do we accept whatever the Lord allows without ignoring the fact that suffering exists because of sin? We struggle to reconcile God’s character with our crushing circumstances. So we sink our souls into the psalms, echoing the laments that say the words we’re afraid to articulate on our own. Surely it is safe to complain with the Lord’s own words, we plead.
How long, O Lord?
Will you forget me forever?
Make haste, O God, to deliver me!
Save me, O God!
O Lord, all my longing is before you.
Your hand has come down on me.
How long must I have sorrow in my heart?
We pray and we plead, hoping against hope that the Lord will change our lot. And when he doesn’t, we’re left with the trial and a trembling faith that somehow he will redeem it.
Last year, my teenage son went through a nine-hour operation to surgically correct his scoliosis. The surgeon removed every vertebra from Isaiah’s spine, breaking a few in the process. With bone grafts, titanium rods, and two dozen screws, he carefully put my son’s spine back together. It was a dangerous surgery given the stress to the spinal cord, and when the hospital released my son to go home, we braced ourselves for the long recovery. One night, I tried rolling Isaiah to his side to help with pain relief. I wedged pillows around every inch of his body. “Why did I have to go through this, Mom?” he tearfully asked me, breathing through waves of pain. “Why did God allow me to have scoliosis?” I cupped his cheek with my hand and fought tears. “I don’t know, Isaiah. But I know that he loves you. And sometimes that just has to be enough.” He nodded, accepting my words because deep down he knows what’s true.
I would have gladly taken Isaiah’s place on the operating table if I could. I would have gathered all his pain in my hands and absorbed it for him. I would have spared him if I had that power. But, I didn’t. I couldn’t. And now that I have seen the spiritual growth that pushed through the earth of his untested faith, I am not sure I would have spared him. He is stronger, surer of God’s care for him. His faith at the tender age of sixteen is as unflappable as I could ever have hoped. Lest you think me an unloving mother, you’d feel the same if you’d seen what I’ve seen.
I had been meditating on the psalms throughout the months of preparation for Isaiah’s surgery and then through recovery. While those lament psalms created paths of prayer when I didn’t know what to pray, it was Psalm 119:68 that reset my understanding of endurance. “You are good and do good. Teach me your statutes,” the psalmist writes. I wrote the words in my journal, memorized them, rehearsed them when surgery went long, when my son wept in pain, when standing took every ounce of strength, when he gripped the edges of the walker and whispered, “The Lord is with me, the Lord is with me, the Lord is with me.” I reminded my family and myself that God is good and he does good, and we can trust him with our suffering.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that verse became a grid through which I would begin to evaluate everything that happens to me or my loved ones. God is good and he does good. When my own health took a difficult turn with an autoimmune flareup later that year, I rehearsed the truth in my mind and heart. God is good and he does good. When money was tight and the bills piled up: God is good and he does good. When a relationship broke because of shipwrecked faith, I had to remind myself again: God is good and he does good.
God’s goodness—the truth of it, the certainty of it, the absolute steadfastness of it—became the grid through which everything had to be filtered and examined. Whereas in years past I have looked to my trials to tell me something about God, Psalm 119:68 shaped my heart to reverse the process. Now I must look at God’s character and let him tell me something about my trials. I call it “the goodness grid” for it aligns my heart to remember that though my circumstances aren’t always good, the God who rescued me from sin is always good. This perspective gives room for my lament but roots it in the certainty that God hasn’t become my enemy. I don’t always know why he allows what he allows or why he doesn’t end certain trials when I ask him to. Sometimes my answer to my children is simply I don’t know.
But what I do know is that God is good and he does good. And in that unchangeable goodness is the unique divine ability to redeem suffering, mold hearts in the shadowed valleys, and to use hard things for ultimate good. He specializes in redemption, you know.
I still thumb through Psalms with my complaints. I’ve had a challenging season of health where the treatment is as hard to bear as the disease itself. I explained to a friend the other day that my options are either pain or illness. “Pick your poison,” I laughed because it’s true, but I tried not to cry because it’s also incurable. But this is where the goodness grid helps me to laugh at the days to come. God is good and he does good. So whatever trials I face in this life will not be the end of me, not really. God can and will use them to be the making of the me he is pleased to bring about.
The sufferings we face in this life are real and painful. But God is using them to prepare us for eternity. If you are in Christ, your whole life is a story of redemption. You have trusted him with your eternity. You can trust him with the trials of today. And tomorrow. And ten years from now. Because he is good and he does good. His goodness will help you endure.
God is good and he does good. In that unchangeable goodness is the divine ability to redeem suffering, mold hearts in the shadowed valleys, and to use hard things for ultimate good. He specializes in redemption, you know. Share on X
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.