“Praise the Lord! Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good! His faithful love endures forever.” Psalm 106:1
I lived with my grandparents, Mama Stella and Daddy Charles, during my childhood. Every day seemed like Thanksgiving Day at their house because Mama Stella was a great cook. She made everything from scratch. Of all the things Mama Stella made, her biscuits were her crowning achievement. And although many in my family have tried to replicate them, no one has been able to. I never would have thought of eating any of the biscuit ingredients separately. None of them were appealing in and of themselves. But mixed by Mama Stella’s expert hands, those ingredients resulted in the most amazing biscuits in the same way.
God, in His sovereign wisdom, works all things together for good “to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28 NKJV). We may not fully know the good or bad things until we get to Heaven. But God can take all the events of our lives—the good and the so-called bad things—and put them in the oven of adversity. And when it is all done, we can say, “That is good! “
It is easy to give thanks for what we perceive as good things, but it is not so easy to give thanks for what we perceive as bad things. Yet I have discovered that the difference between the two is not always clear, at least on this side of Heaven. I know people who wished for certain “good things” to happen in their lives, and when they did, those so-called good things destroyed them. Sometimes they even included success. I also know people who lamented over bad things that happened in their lives, but with time, they realized that those bad things were actually good.
To give thanks to God, we must first realize as Christians that God is in control of all the circumstances in our lives.
Evangelist, Eddie Dunlap
