When things are going well, we hardly ever notice, but when things are hard, we quickly wonder why. We look for the cause of the hardship in what we did or didn’t do.

We wonder if it might be someone else’s fault. Or we want to blame God. But recently we’ve found that bad things can never come from God.

Good things come from God’s hand. What God does, is to give His children more and more good things. It’s how He is, it’s His nature, to only want to give us what is good.

And He indeed does it. The problem is that we don’t see it. The hardship overshadows our existence and we don’t actually notice the good things that happen to us.

Just being able to breathe is such a merciful gift from God. The fact that our hearts beat in our chests is a miracle. Did you know that your blood moves a distance of 100 to 150 km per day?

God gives us people around us with whom we have relationships, a parent, a friend, a spouse, a child, with whom we can walk through life every day. How alone we would have been on our own!

We can smell and see and hear and sing and chat and feel and taste and walk. Each and every one a gift from God. Go and talk to deaf people and blind people and those who are paralysed, and they will tell you about the gift that they didn’t get and how much they miss it.

We can think and reason. We have a computer that sends all the impulses to specific places in our bodies. Whether it is to pick up a 50kg bag of fertilizer or to take a small SIM card out of your phone. The grey ball in our head is a huge gift from God.

¹⁷Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. Or as the King James Bible puts it very simply: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above …

God is a good God and, therefore, only good things come from Him. We know that God is not a poor or bad God; therefore, no bad things come from Him.

We have to come to a standstill often and allow ourselves to recognise all the good things that we receive from God. Then we’ll live differently. Because we are grateful, we’ll handle the people we meet daily differently.

They will see it and want to be different too. And we will have a real impact in the lives of other people.

If you need something good in your life today, go and ask the One who only hands out good gifts. He knows exactly what you need.

Scripture
James 1:12-18

Reflection
How do you see suffering in your life?
How do you see God in your life?
What can you be grateful for?

Prayer
Father, how good You are! All I am, all I have, all the good flowing into my life every day, comes from You. You are the greatest, most loving God there is. All glory to You! In Jesus’ Name. Amen.