‘Tis the season of good cheer, good food, good feelings, and good deeds.
The season just doesn’t seem complete without checking those good deeds off our lists.
There’s a house I drive past where there is no hot water heater and only thirty minutes of electricity at a time. The children there will not have presents, and I wonder if they will have food for Christmas. It is an opportunity to do good, but I know that any good I could do them would be temporary. It wouldn’t really fix their core problems.
This doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it, but it leaves me wishing for a greater good that would bring real, lasting change and redemption.
At church, we give out shoebox gifts to many. It is rewarding to see the smiles and to hear the joyful ring of children’s voices as they anticipate the football, the doll, or the matchbox cars inside. It makes us feel good to do good until January when we see the neighborhood dog with a bite of the football or the doll in his mouth.
All of our Christmas good amounts to a January mud puddle unless it has God’s good as its source.
God’s good lasts.
God’s good affects real change. It redeems. It transforms.
After a particularly difficult December day, to come home to green, red, and purple Northern Lights dancing across a snowy prairie is good.
After a perplexing conversation, to sit down and listen to Handel’s Messiah is good.
After a season of grief, to hear the joyful laughter of my children decorating cookies is good.
The good in these things that counts is the absolute value of God’s goodness that they contain. When we do good, it is the same. The real value of our good is how much of God’s goodness is stuffed inside.
When Paul wrote to the Ephesian church, he addressed one particular group in need of good: slaves. He reminded them of their duty as Christians, who had been changed by Christ.
He wrote: “Do the will of God, from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.”
Paraphrased: You can’t out-good God.
As Christians, the Ephesian slaves didn’t have to identify as bondservants of earthly masters as much as they needed to identify as slaves belonging to God. They could do good, not because of their condition, but in spite of it because of their relationship with Him.
That relationship was made possible by the good incarnation when our good God dwelt among us to make the good sacrifice that would lead to our good confession.
It is goodness that never wears off, isn’t dependent on the season or mood, and never falls short.
His goodness sustains the slave, the hurting child, and me. We will never out-good God, but we can live each day imitating Him.
Sarah Dixon Young 