I'm Not Signing Up for a Religious Lottery.

"But you trust that He's good... right?" 

My mother swirled her tea as she placed this question gently on the table. She smoothed her hands, checked her rings, waited for me to answer.

"Well...," I hesitated. "No, not really."

Sometimes I stand looking at the panorama of my past, my arms stubbornly locked across my chest, and I say, "How is that good?" Arrogantly, I size up the mountains, the colors, the people and I adjust my lens toward the distance and say, "Nope. Not what I would call good. Not entirely good. Somewhat good. Here and there lovely. But overall, completely, totally, wholly good? No."

In the dark of my living room, under a blanket last night, I listened to a man of God I admire address biblical womanhood. Calling us higher. To be clothed in strength and dignity. To laugh at the days ahead.

Not out of naivety, but out of hope in the Lord.

And today, I listed my grievances to a friend. He listened, as anyone could do through a chat window, as I typed.

"When do I get to say, "Look what the Lord has done for me!" and even in writing that, I'm revealing my ingratitude for the Gospel. ... if the Lord does nothing else but make me an example of Grace, that is grace alone. He already redeemed my soul, why am I asking for more?"

He says, "That's truth. Interesting how quickly entitlement slips into our thought process."

I agree: "It's so second nature..... It's so Eve."

The more I think God is not good, the more I am revealing my own idol of self. I am reaching toward a fruited tree, because surely what God has given me is not good enough. Surely he's withholding.

The more I tell you that I question God's intentions in my life, the more I am laying open the waste of my heart. I am sinking my teeth into the juicy, indulgent self; dripping with sin and rebellion.

When I deem something that I do not have as "good" and then turn to God to "direct" him in that, I am in a way saying —

You don't know better.
You don't know more.
You don't have this under control.

There is more rest for me in trusting in God's sovereignty, even above my limited human perspective of what "good" is. God is good. He is bound to his own sovereign promises. He is not withholding good from me.

I don't have faith in a God who is sometimes good. My hope is not in a gospel that partly redeems. If it were that, then I'd just be signing up for a religious lottery.

It's tempting and too easy to become my own storyteller. I know what happens when I pick at the bark of this tree and feel Eve within me, sultry and unsubmissive, tangling around my fingertips. I know how that story ends. And that, that is not good.

But for grace.