God is Good

(Found here)

“Let me warn you. I am going to say something strange again: God is not good! Now wait. What I mean is, God is not good the way we think of good. He is good the way true love is good. He loves Adam and Eve, but he expels them from Eden, and he is good. He loves Abraham, but calls him from his home and lets him wander aimlessly in the desert; he asks him to sacrifice his only son Isaac, and he is good. He loves the Chosen People and makes them wander in the desert for 40 years and suffer all kinds of calamities, and he is good.

It seems to me that the actions of God which look like punishments to us are really the movements of his love. They are invitations to be penitent, not to ‘do penance,’ necessarily, but to change our lives. I see our lives as a rhythm of decisions and nondecisions which call for penitent hearts, and the actions of God synchronize our wayward music.

All of this came home to me only yesterday as I was sitting in a field listening to the music of a jonquil. I could see in the distance a farmer scything his field, and I knew this flower would be cut down within the hour. So I picked the jonquil and took it to my cell. I placed it in water and let it sing on for a few more days. Now, if the flower could think but didn’t know about the scythe, it would think that I was not a good man. Perhaps it would hate me for stopping its music. Believe me, we are all jonquils, and God is good.”

~Murray Bodo (from Juniper: Friend of Francis, Fool of God)