What if the worst thing you have ever experienced in your life was necessary to prepare you for the best moment of your life, a moment that you had little or no faith would ever come? What if what you once thought a curse was really a blessing incognito?
What if the bad stuff is just part of the good stuff? What if the trouble is just an ingredient that alone is rank and disgusting, but blended with the other ingredients in the recipe, causes the dish to burst with deliciousness?
What if Romans 8:28 is true?
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
The day Donya and I closed on our house and right after we took an exuberant tour of what was now our place, my phone rang.
On the other end of the call was my hysterical daughter. She was all but incoherent in her sobbing as she told me the story that would in a matter of days bring an end to her storybook marriage. She was distraught, devastated, delirious with pain.
She had waited so long to find a love of her own and now it was gone, blowing in the wind like the feathery petals of a dandelion. She hadn’t known it was so fragile.
A few months later, after she had moved into our new home with us, there to lick her wounds and begin the arduous and seemingly impossible task of healing her broken heart, we found ourselves already in December. We visited downtown Grapevine, DFW’s own version of Christmas town, USA. In the town square, as part of the Christmas decor, is a kissing booth. She had just begun to talk to a guy she thought she sort of liked. She sent him a picture from the kissing booth, where she stood alone.
Fast-forward to this past Saturday! She, her mother, and I are in Grapevine again. It is almost December again. Christmastown is twinkling and teeming with holiday revelers.
We are not there alone in that sea of celebrants. Her sisters and their husbands are there. My grandson is there with his best friend. Some of her friends are there. And that guy she was texting with from that very place just a year ago? He is there. His mom is there. His brother and his sister are there. In all, about 30 of us have gathered in Grapevine to celebrate the holiday season together.
The kissing booth is there, too. Couples are having photos made of themselves kissing in it. Then, Lacey, the daughter in question, and James, now her bona fide boyfriend, are urged to get in the booth for a kiss and a photo op. Lacey does. James does not.
Instead, he stays outside the booth.
What are you doing? Lacey asked.
So, he took a knee, held up an elegant box, opened it, and a tiny LED light illuminated a diamond ring.
His proposal was nice. His promise was better
You will never be alone in a kissing booth again.
All things work together for good to them that love God
Even divorce?
Yes. Even that.
Even betrayal? Even Abandonment? Even heartbreak?
Yes. Even those.
It doesn’t say that all the things you experience are good but that in all of those things He is working for your good.
That is love.
That is even better than a kissing booth promise.
“And we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose. For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified.
What then shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?”