I know I’ve been way too quiet on the blogging front lately. My apologies. I think I have a February church newsletter article somewhere in the ether that never made it onto the blog. At any rate, here’s the March church newsletter article. It’s been out for a week or so, but I’m just now getting around to posting it.
“Can God be any less good to me on the average Tuesday morning than he was on that monumental Friday afternoon when he hung on a cross in my place? The answer is a resounding NO. God will not be less good to me tomorrow either, because God cannot be less good to me. His goodness is not the effect of his disposition but the essence of his person—not an attitude but an attribute.”
Those words were written several years by Paige Benton, a PCA pastor’s daughter, who was asked to write about singleness for a bunch of singles at a large PCA church. At the time she was a single lady who confessed two things: 1) She longed to be married. 2) She knew without a shadow of doubt that God was not being “less good” to her than He was to her recently-married younger sister.
“God will not be less good to me,” Benton wrote, “because God cannot be less good to me. It is a cosmic impossibility for God to shortchange any of his children. … If he fluctuated one quark in his goodness, he would cease to be God.”
I also used those quotes as a sermon illustration a few months ago. That should tell you a few things. 1) For better or worse, (I think it’s the former) I don’t have too much pride to appeal to a female theologian for a sermon illustration. 2) I believe God is being just as good to me (and just as good to you) NOW as He was on that monumental Friday afternoon nearly 2,000 years ago.
Good Friday (what an appropriate name!) and Easter Sunday will be here before we know it. I hope you ponder those truths in the meantime, and I hope you don’t forget them when the celebration of Passion Week is in the rearview mirror.
It’s worth noting that Paige Benton is now Paige Brown, happily married and happily serving the church in several capacities. I’ve never met her, but I’m sure if you asked her, she would be careful to say that God is not being any better to her now than He was when she was single. As the popular saying goes, “God is good … all the time. All the time … God is good.” The Psalms agree (Ps 119:68; Ps 73:1). I hope you do, too.
Postscript – The whole article by Paige Brown is worth reading. Here’s a link:
http://static.pcpc.org/articles/singles/singledout.pdf
And if the hyperlink doesn’t work, Google “Paige brown singleness” and it pops right up.
I Do Not Run Aimlessly 