I feel like the most well kept secret of the gospel has gotten out to me recently. I say to a friend today that in the past I have waited for God to pull through in a good way before I would believe that His character was good. You may laugh at my backwards Christianity, but I tell the truth. This is what I believed.

My whole faith was on the cusp of death at every moment, waiting for my Magician-God to turn the next trick, surprise me with what everyone else knew all along.

Or maybe not. I don't know.

But here is what I say to my friend today: I am learning about God's character without any signs at all--just his word, spoken, and it is. And here you may laugh again, incredulous, at my misappropriation of the manifold goodness of God. But it doesn't change that this is what I am learning. This is what I am soaking in every morning and evening and quiet moments of the day.

I never knew. I never knew that God's character in itself is good and that by nature of that, He does good things. Even the bad things (And please don't dismiss me when I say that, believe me, I have had my share of bad things.) are meant to display His glory somehow. I don't know how. I don't even need to know how. I just need to know that He is good. And even if He were not the father of all good things and even if every good and perfect gift were not from Him and even if we were not His workmanship, created for good works. Even if. All these things.

His nature is not only to be good, but his nature is good.