When We Ask God Why (Bonus)

In Good Company: The Righteous Also Ask Why 1:29

“My soul loathes my life; I will give free course to my complaint, I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.”

— Job 10:1 (NKJV)

Job asked the same thing. Job was the most righteous man on the planet. That's not a small thing to say. He was the most righteous man on planet earth in the time that he lived.

And yet he knew what it was like to experience a difficulty and try to reconcile or have to reconcile that difficulty with the fact that God is good. And Job was not alone in this. Moses, Jeremiah, David, Daniel, Paul, the list goes on. In fact, every great man or woman of faith has experienced these same moments.

If God loves me, why did this terrible thing happen? Did I do something to deserve it? Am I being punished? If you've ever asked those questions, we're going to try to filter those very questions through Job's questions and see if we can come to some conclusions.

All right, I'm going to go ahead and reread verses 1 through 7, then we'll look at those verses, and then work our way through the balance of the text. Verse 1, this is Job speaking. He says this. He says, My soul loathes my life.

My soul loathes my life. I will give free course to my complaint. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. I will say to God, do not condemn me.

Show me why. This is one of many times that word why comes up. Show me why. Why You contend with me.

Remember, he's standing on his righteousness. He says, I don't deserve this. Show me why You contend with me. Does it seem good to You that You should oppress, that You should despise me, the work of Your hands, and smile on the counsel of the wicked?

Do You have eyes of flesh? Do You see as man sees? Are Your days like the days of a mortal man? Are Your years like the days of a mighty man, that You should seek for my iniquity, search up my sin, although You know I'm not wicked, and there's no one who can deliver me from Your hand.

God Receives the Prayers of a Grieving Heart 3:06

“Does it seem good to You that You should oppress, That You should despise the work of Your hands, And smile on the counsel of the wicked?”

— Job 10:3 (NKJV)

All right, let's stop there. That is a fascinating and difficult prayer to utter. Now, before I even examine that, let me say this much. God can take whatever prayers you bring to Him, even if they come with hurt on your heart.

God's a big enough God to sustain what you bring to Him, even if what you bring to Him is couched in words of grief and sorrow and lament and questions and anxieties and fears. God didn't love Job any less because he asked of the hurts of his heart. With that said, it didn't mean that everything Job says here or elsewise in the book was correct.

With that said, in verse 1, very first verse, he made a very strong statement. Specifically, he said this. He said, my soul loathes my life. In the vernacular, what's he saying?

He's saying, I wish I was dead. He just says, God, I wish I was dead. And if you fast forward to the end of verse 18, he's going to say the same thing in different words. Both cases, he's saying, God, it would be better off if I simply wasn't here rather than to undergo what I'm undergoing.

My soul loads my life. The fact I'm taking another breath today gives me no comfort. Man alive, you've got to be some kind of broken, some kind of hurt to be in a position where you'd prefer death over living another day under the circumstances that you're currently living.

The Depth of Job's Loss: Not a Molehill 4:17

“Are Your days like the days of a mortal man? Are Your years like the days of a mighty man, That You should seek for my iniquity And search out my sin?”

— Job 10:5-6 (NKJV)

Now, with that said, let's stop it. Is Job just being a drama queen? Is he making a mountain out of a molehill? You know, sometimes we do that.

Sometimes, oh, woe is me, you know. When I was younger, I remember I was a teenager, and everything that comes upon your plate — oh, the end of the world is upon me, right? Sometimes, sometimes we take small grievances and concerns and inflate them into something bigger than they really are. Is that what Job is doing here?

Is he just overstating his problems? Dear heavens, no. Read the first nine chapters. You can see every bad thing that could happen, happened to Job. He lost just about everything you can lose while still remaining alive.

He lost loved ones and possessions and lands and forests and flocks and fields and everything. He lost his health to the degree that he's literally just sitting there in the dirt with sores of boils covering his body, scraping his sores with a broken piece of pottery in order to give himself some comfort.

That's where this man was at the time that he utters these very words in chapter 10. He is a broken man who has lost virtually everything that he had.

The Error of Retribution: Suffering Is Not Always Punishment 5:17

“Although You know that I am not wicked, And there is no one who can deliver from Your hand.”

— Job 10:7 (NKJV)

Now, as he sat there in the dirt, trying to figure out what's going on, the problem that he had was that he knew he was fairly righteous. I mean, it's not a surprise to righteous people — they're righteous; they should be humble about it. It's okay to be humble if you're righteous. But he knew he was righteous, and he hadn't done that which was wrong.

So that really, really affected his thinking, because his understanding was that bad things happen to bad people, and exclusively to bad people. His understanding was that — now, if I'd done something wrong, God, I could understand Your punitive hand coming down upon me, but I haven't. Show me, show me, show me what I've done.

If I've done something, God, show me. That's what he's asking these verses. Show me. I'm begging you.

Tell me why I'm in this position. Explain it to me, God, because I don't get it. So that's what he's asking there in these verses. Now, what we're going to find in the book of Job, or at least what you'll find if you go through the book of Job, is that he has friends who show up.

And I say the word friends kind of loosely. You know, with friends like these, who needs enemies, right? You read the book of Job, you'll see his friends show up, and they sit there, and after he's done speaking, they pour out their wisdom upon him. I'll use wisdom in air quotes.

They pour out their wisdom upon him. The things they have to say, man alive, they just do him no help. They're just the worst sort of input and advice.

Sin Equals Suffering? The False Counsel of Job's Friends 6:29

And part of the reason it's just terrible advice that his friends are giving him is because his friends were telling him the same thing that he was telling himself, which is bad things should only happen to bad people. If you've read the book of Job, you remember his friends come to him and they basically tell Job, they say, Job, you're not being honest here.

There's no way what's happened to you would have happened to you if you're not hiding some secret sins. No way. No way. Sin equals suffering.

Sin equals suffering. They only understood suffering through the lens that you did something to deserve it. You did something to deserve it. Frankly, that was Job's mentality too.

And he says, I didn't do anything. So they argue back and forth. His friends say, yes, you did. And he says, no, I didn't for chapter after chapter after chapter.

But his friends thought that the only reason that he could be undergoing such a thing was because he was evil, wicked, or bad. I tell you, that's simply not the case. If something terrible has befallen you, it's not necessarily, although it could be, but it's not necessarily because you've done something wrong. You think of Daniel thrown into the lion's den.

Did he deserve it? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, did they deserve to be thrown into a fiery furnace? Paul in jail, Paul whipped, Paul beaten, Paul shipwrecked, Paul martyred. Did they deserve it?

No, of course not.

The Doctrine of Providence: God the Divine Craftsman 7:39

“Your hands have made me and fashioned me, An intricate unity; Yet You would destroy me.”

— Job 10:8 (NKJV)

And yet that's what his friends are insisting is true of Job, that he deserved it. All right, let's look at verses 8 through 12. Verse 8, he's still speaking out of the hurts in his heart. He says, God, Your hands have made me and fashioned me, an intricate unity.

You can just imagine him kind of looking at his own construction, an intricate unity, and yet You would destroy me. Remember, I pray, You've made me like clay. Will You turn me into dust again? Did You not pour me out like milk and curdled me like cheese and clothed me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews?

You've granted me life and favor and Your care has preserved my spirit. The artist Michelangelo, Michelangelo, he had been working on one particular project, one particular piece of art, one particular piece of marble for a period of about eight years. And one day Michelangelo gets up out of bed, he takes a mallet in his hand, he goes up to this piece of artwork and he begins to shatter it.

He begins to destroy it. And history records that those who were aware of what he was doing were shocked. Dismay. How could he do this?

He spent years working on this piece. He poured himself into it. He worked long into the night, you know, with candles flickering, while he's carefully working on this thing. And ultimately, he wakes up one day and he just decides to shatter it, just decides to break it down.

The questions that Michelangelo's friends and acquaintances had with regards to what in the world Michelangelo was doing is sort of what Job is asking here of God. He says, God, God, You've spent a lot of time making me the man I am. You fashioned me. You formed me.

You appointed my days. Any good thing that I've done in times past was done through Your volition. You've given me all these years of life to get thus far. You've poured Yourself into me, and yet for reasons I don't get, You're like Michelangelo destroying his own marble.

You're destroying me, and I don't understand it, given how much time You committed to building me and making me the man that I am. It seemed counterintuitive, is what Job was saying. It's counterintuitive. I don't get it.

I don't get how You could do such a thing. How does this work? Are you a God who changes on a dime? Because that's sort of what it's feeling like, is roughly what he's saying.

He doesn't understand how God could have fashioned his life so intricately and then just set it on fire, so to speak.

When Life Shatters and Cannot Be Reversed 9:55

Have you ever woken up on a similar day and felt that way? Have you ever been experiencing a life that is just going along really well? Maybe even just average. Let's say average.

But then something terrible happens, whether you're going well or average or what have you, or every shade in between. You wake up one day and you get that phone call. You wake up one day and there's a car accident. You wake up one day and there's something that's happened.

And your world is just shattered. And things will never be the same. It'll never be what it once was. You ever wonder, you know, how did this happen?

Everything was going along so well. I've gotten to this stage of life. Everything's been moving along. God loves me.

I love God. I'm trying my best here. He sees it. For reasons I don't get, here we are.

And there are some things that can happen in your life that don't get reversed. Again, how do you process that? If God is good and if he's in charge, if God equals God, how do you process that?

"Why Was I Ever Born?" Job's Lament Renewed 10:47

Well, before we try to answer that to the degree we can answer that, let's attach now the remainder of Job's questions in verses 13 through 18, and then we'll try to to package some conclusions. Verses 13 through 18. Now God, these things You have hidden in Your heart. I know that this was with You.

If I sin, then You mark me. You'll not acquit me of my iniquity. If I'm wicked, woe to me. Even I'm righteous now.

I can't lift up my head, let alone if I was a sinner. Even when I'm righteous, look what's happening to me. I'm full of disgrace. See my misery.

If my head is exalted, You hunt me like a fierce lion. You show Yourself awesome against me. He felt like a hunted man based on what was going on in his world. You renew Your witnesses against me.

You increase Your indignation toward me, changes and war ever with me. Why then have You ever brought me out of the womb? This gets back to his original point. I wish I was dead.

Why have You brought me out of the womb? Why was I ever born? Oh, that I had perished and no eye had ever seen me. I don't know whether you've ever experienced one of those moments.

I wish I was never born. God, take me home now. I don't know if you've ever experienced that.

A Great Cloud of Witnesses: Moses, Elijah, and Jeremiah 11:49

God willing, you haven't or won't. But let me tell you something. If you ever do, know this much. You are in very good company with people in the pages of scripture and not just Job.

Moses. You know, everyone loves Moses now. Like if you go to Israel and talk about Moses and there's a great reverence, oh Moses, Moses, right? Moses means everything.

Moses has meant a great deal to the Jews across the centuries. But you know what's ironic? In the time in which Moses lived, no one liked him. In the time in which Moses was alive, the people around Moses just couldn't stand the guy.

They accused him all the time. They said, you let us out. You left us for dead. You're doing this thing wrong.

You're doing that thing wrong. He's up the mountain a little too long. They're like, whew, I guess he's not coming back now on with our regular scheduled programming. Even his own brother and sister would complain about old Moses.

Remember Miriam had the leprosy of the hand and so forth. Moses was not terribly loved in his day. And in Numbers chapter 11, he grows tired of this. He's trying to do what God would have him do.

He's desperately trying to do what God would have him do. In chapter 11 of Numbers, he says to God, he says, kill me now. He says, kill me now. That's exactly what he says in Numbers chapter 11.

Just kill me now. Elijah, 1 Kings 19, similar issues. Elijah's a prophet of God. Elijah is another man who is beloved in the present day.

Do you know who they leave a seat over in modern Jewish Passovers? They leave one chair open. Who's it open for? Elijah, right?

Everyone, Elijah, right? But Elijah, when he was alive, no one loved Elijah. When Elijah was alive, everyone despised Elijah. They treated him terribly and the like.

He's just trying to do God's work. He's just trying to teach the people and the like. They could not stand Elijah. And what happens is after that big event on 1 Kings chapter 18, the fire comes down on Mount Carmel.

Elijah thinks, well, now, now that God has shown Himself to be the Jehovah, the God of our ancestors. And he's demonstrated that the pagan gods are worthless. Now everything's going to go right. Now God has shown up.

The fire has come down. We're going to get with the program here in Israel. Well, wrong. Just a couple of days later, what happens?

He's running for his life because Jezebel's assassins have been sent to kill him. And he ends up under a broom tree, under a juniper tree, and he can't figure it out. He doesn't get it. He asked God, why, why, why, why, why?

You're God. These are your people. You just showed yourself powerful. You've appointed me to be a prophet to the people.

I understand all these different things, and what I don't understand is why I'm here having to hide from Jezebel's assassins who are trying to kill me if you're good and you're in charge. Why is this going on? Kill me now. Kill me now.

Jeremiah, Jeremiah chapter 15. The prophet was dead tired. He's just standing alone, and he asked God the same question that Job asked here. He says, God, why was I ever born?

If this is what I've been appointed to, and it's just so miserable. I wake up, and it's just, I have nightmares when I sleep. I wake up, and it's more of the same. God, why was I ever born?

Paul, 2 Corinthians 1. Paul said this, that the persecution he was facing at that time, 2 Corinthians chapter 1, caused him and his fellow disciples to despair of life itself. Do you see a common theme? I could go on.

Do you see the theme? There are many times when some of the most beloved, awesome champions of the faith in Scripture, some of the people that we revere the most felt the way that maybe you felt last week or last month or last year, broken, hurting, and asking God the question, why?

God Refines Through the Question: The Still Small Voice 15:13

If it's any consolation to know this, God used those moments of why as mechanisms to refine the very people who are asking the question. When Elijah asked God why, and he's crying, he's literally weeping under a juniper tree in the desert, God sends ministering angels to him, which is cool how that works.

God's not sitting there aloof and indifferent with His arms folded to see how you do. He comes alongside you in the midst of your griefs and your hurts every bit as much as Jesus came alongside those who were grieving when Lazarus died, and he weeps alongside them. So he sends ministering angels to Elijah, but ultimately Elijah, He leads them to kind of a cleft in the rock, so to speak, there at Sinai, I would believe.

He leads Elijah to this place, and then He shows His power. He shows His might, the same might that Job was talking about in verses 8 through 12. He shows might. There's fire, there's earthquakes, there's lightning and storms and all this.

So God demonstrates, yes, Elijah, I'm the God who can do anything. You're right about that. I can do anything, and if I want to do it, it will be done. Look at my power.

But then in a still small voice, almost like a whisper in Elijah's ears, after all the shaking and tumult has occurred, and in the most intimate way, in a still small voice, God whispers to Elijah, and to paraphrase, He says this. He says, Elijah, you are never alone. It was never as bad as you think it is.

You think you're isolated. You think that you're the only one. There's many thousands who have not bent the knee to the Baals. And I am working even in this.

And I have a plan. And it may not be the plan that you like, recognize, understand, or want. But trust me, it's a good plan. It's a good plan.

And I'm working it out, even in the midst of the very turmoil and hurt that you're experiencing right now. If this is true of Elijah, if this is true of Jeremiah, if this is true of Moses, if this is true of David and Paul and others, if you ever wake up one morning and your world has just been uprooted, so it seems, understand that again you're in the greatest company, and also understand this, that God is with you as you're facing these things.

And you're no more alone than Elijah was, even when he thought that God was a million miles away at that moment and indifferent to what he was going through.

Remember Where You Are: This World Is a War Zone 17:15

As we look to wrap up this morning, let me add a couple other thoughts that might encourage our hearts when we're in those moments like Job, when we're asking, why, why, why, why are these things happening? Why did this one thing happen? Why did this 20 things happen? Why, why, why?

Well, number one, remember this. Remember where you're at. Sometimes we get confused. We think that this is like the garden now, or this is heaven now.

And we think that somehow, in the midst of all this beauty, I mean, we look out, it's pretty nice. Outside the humidity and the deer flies. It's just wonderful out here today. But we look at the world around us and we can be fooled for a moment.

We say, this is pretty good, right? And then something bad happens. You leave the parking lot and your car gets hit. You run over a dog.

Something happens and you're reminded, you're jolted back to reality that maybe this world isn't as great as you thought it was. We can fool ourselves into trying to carve out utopia in the midst of a war zone. But the reminder of scripture time and time again is that it is a war zone.

And because it's a war zone that you're living out your days upon, don't be surprised when you sustain battle scars. Don't be surprised when it happens, because it will, because that's a function of the very environment in which you live.

Life Is Short, Eternity Is Long: Monday and Tuesday 18:22

However, you will not be forever. That's my second point. Life is short, but eternity is long. Whatever difficulty you're facing this week, imagine the greatest difficulty you could face happening to you on a Monday, but then imagine Jesus comes back on Tuesday.

Do you think you could endure that terrible thing if you knew you only had to endure it for one day — that loss, that grievance, that heartache, that hurt — if you knew that Jesus was coming back and He's going to fix everything and wipe away every tear within 24 hours? I think we could probably steady ourselves for Monday if we knew that Tuesday was coming.

Well, here's the thing. Tuesday is coming. Jesus is coming back. Whether you go to Him or He comes to you, one way or another — there's a lot of gray hair in this room — one way or another, it's happening not too far in the distant future.

A day is coming. It's been appointed in the nearest of near terms, really, by which all of the hurts and grievances that we have will be removed from us. The tears will be wiped away, and that's not that far off. When you can kind of see your life through that lens — remember what we just sang in Amazing Grace?

When we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun? The idea is if we're there 10,000 years, then we have no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun. If that's true then, if we're going to be there 10,000 years, and that's but a hair's breadth of what eternity looks like, then dear good gravy, the here and now has got to be nothing.

Whatever you're facing right now, no matter how harsh it is, remember this, it will end in just moments of time, so to speak. The here and now, even if you should live to be a hundred years old, the here and now is but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of eternity.

You Are Not Alone: Through the Valley of the Shadow 19:51

Bear that in mind when you consider the anxieties and the hurts of this day. Thirdly, remember this, you're not alone. That was Elijah's concerns. He felt alone.

And yet David, in those moments when he felt alone, he was reminded of this, that yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Why? Because Thou art with me. David had a lot of moments.

There was palace intrigue going on all the time around David. People wanted to kill him to the left and to the right. It wasn't just Goliath. His own son, Absalom, others came against him regularly.

David was a hunted man even though he was in royalty. David was a hunted man even though he was a powerful man. And so frequently he was walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Now, if he had to walk through that by himself, then, man, that would be no fun.

Sometimes we think that we're walking through these diagnosis and this hardship and this chemo and these other things by ourselves. The truth is that although we're walking through the valley of the shadow of death, no matter how many steps we take in it, whether it's one, ten, twelve, a hundred, God is with us as we do so.

His rod and staff and His presence, they comfort us, and that's something to be reminded of, even when our world seems to be falling apart, that right there, God is with us. It's not like He's just right there next to us.

Trials Refine Faith: All Things Work Together for Good 21:00

He's literally carrying us through the midst of what we were going through. Number four, remember this, your trials refine your faith. They're there for a reason. It's not an accident.

Job, Paul, Elijah, Jeremiah, David, Moses, guess what? They grew. Their faith grew under fire. If you had asked them whether they wanted the calamities that they faced, they would have all said no to a man.

And yet, in retrospect, if they were to look back at their lives from the deathbed, I'm not sure they would have wanted anything different, because they knew that their very trials made them the individuals that they were. Look, everything that's happened to you has not necessarily been fun or enjoyable, and yet, the confluence of all the things that ever happened to you, every choice that you've made, and the choices that other people have made, have led you to this very day, in this very building, this very morning, to hear God's Word.

God's doing something in your life, using all that brokenness somehow to bring together a conductive stream in His will to something that is good, to an outcome that is better than you would otherwise choose for yourself. If you could have only had those things in your life that you really, really wanted for yourself, and that you could have avoided all the hardships, like you told God — have you ever gone bowling with small kids?

You take like, you know, five-year-old kids bowling. You remember they have these things now — they didn't have it when I was, you know, when I was growing up, you know. Back then, you know, you're a five-year-old, you roll the ball and it goes in the gutter and you cry, right? Well now, we don't want kids to cry, so what exists at bowling alleys?

That's right, the bumpers. You push this button, boop, and these bumpers go up, and then a kid can just give the worst roll in the world. As long as it's got any momentum, it'll bang against and eventually hit the pins, right? Sometimes that's what we want of God.

We say, God, put up the bumpers. Put up the bumpers so that I can get through these days. With that said, sometimes falling into the gutter, so to speak, are part of what has made us the individuals that we are. It's not to say that every choice has uniformly been enjoyable, but God has used the choices, good and bad, to help to make us the individuals that we are.

All things come together for good for those who love Him.

The Empathy of Christ: A Man of Sorrows Who Can Relate 22:51

All right, the fifth point, final point, here's this. Whatever you're going through, whatever you might go through next week, next month, next year, whatever it is, no matter how horrible it is, Jesus Himself can relate to it. God is not aloof in this sense, that He created the world, and He created you, and He spins you like a top, and He stands back to see how you'll do, and then He kind of judges you on the base of the outcome.

Jesus, when He came to this earth, He was despised, He was rejected, He was beaten, He was mocked, He was spit upon, He was ultimately crucified. He was a man of sorrows. He was acquainted with grief. When Jesus came alongside and wept alongside those who were weeping, it was because He knew what it felt like to be hurt.

The one who made you, the one who saved you, the one who even now gives breath to your lungs, knows exactly what you're going through. He doesn't just study you in order to kind of see how you do, but He can relate to you. That's what we've said in the past is the difference between sympathy and empathy.

Sympathy says, I'm sorry for you. Something terrible happened to you. I sympathize. Empathy says, I can relate.

Whatever you might go through, the heart of Christ can relate to it. And that's encouraging to know. It's encouraging to know because it means that when I pray to Him, He knows. He knows.

He knows. He knows. You ever have a child who — some terrible things happen? Maybe they've fallen and skinned their knee.

Maybe someone was cruel to them in class. Maybe there's some heartache in their heart. You pick that child up. One of the most immediate things to just say — you say, I know.

I know. Why? Because you can relate to whatever your child has faced. You've faced hardship and heartache and bullying and skinned knees and all that stuff.

You know what it's like. And it's tender to tell your child. It's tender for the child to receive that idea that you can relate to that pain. Christ can relate to what we're going through, whether it's Job, David, Paul, Moses, Jeremiah, or you and I. One last thought this morning.

The Hissing Turtle: Moved From Plan A to Plan B for Our Good 24:42

It kind of helped me understand a little bit the trajectory of my own life and ministry at times. I was driving through Wool Market, and this is not terribly long ago, driving through Wool Market. I like to go by Tarantos. Even if I'm not going to eat there, I just enjoy the idea that I could eat there.

So I'm driving past Tarantos, and I go past — I'm going through Wool Market. It's just me driving, and I look, and I see something in the road ahead. It's right sitting there on two yellow dividing lines. It looks square in the middle.

And I see it up ahead. And at first, I don't know quite what it is. And then, of course, I know what it is. It's kind of oval-shaped.

It's dark in color. It's sitting there. It moves slightly. What is it?

It's a turtle. You've been any time down here in South Mississippi, you know exactly what it is. It's a turtle. So in our family, I don't know how you handle these scenarios.

But in our house, what we do is we get out of the car, presuming it's safe, presuming I could get run over by a semi-truck. I'll pull off to the side of the road, and I'll walk over, and I'll pick up the turtle and move it. So that's exactly what I did. You know, it was hot and humid, but I didn't want this poor turtle to get slaughtered there in the middle of the road.

And it was dead in the middle. I mean, there was — wherever it went left or right, there was a good chance that someone was going to take it out. So I got out of the car, I picked this turtle up and I'm thinking to myself, oh, what a good guy. Look at me here, taking care of this poor little turtle.

I pick up this turtle. I kind of look at it and smile. Do you know what this turtle did? It gave me the hissing of a lifetime.

I mean, I've been hissed at by turtles, but nothing like this. It took one look at me, and it's all I could do not to throw the turtle. So I go and I take this turtle and — still hissing the whole time — and I go put it off in the grass. I back off.

This thing made more noise than any 10 turtles I've ever picked up. Now, as I'm driving away — ah, man — and I'm thinking, that turtle was — he sure didn't like me. And then it dawned on me: how many times has God moved me from plan A to plan B? He moved me out of the middle of a highway I didn't even know I was positioned in, in order to put me someplace safe.

And my response was to hiss like a mad person. For a lot of us, we can relate. To be moved from one state of affairs to another and to not like it and to think it's the end of the world. But remember, God is good.

God's in charge. All things come together for good for those who love Him. And even if you don't understand it in the moment, what He does, He does to bring good outcomes. It'll be a blessing to you and to those other lives that you touch.

Let's pray.