365 Days of the Great Names of God, Day 278: The Lord Is Good (Adonai Tov)

The Lord Is Good (Adonai Tov)

"The LORD is good and does what is right; he shows the proper path to those who go astray." (Psalm 25:8 NLT)

"You are good, and what you do is good; teach me your decrees." (Psalm 119:68 NIV)

"God is good,

All the time.

All the time,

God is good."

This refrain is meant to remind us of two foundational facts: God is good—He is kind, loving, compassionate, generous, faultless, and on the list goes—and His goodness is true even when what He does does not look or feel good to us.

The apparent (to our human eyes) delay and disguise of God's goodness can perplex and distress us.

Consider the Biblical Elizabeth. Here is a woman described in God's own inspired words as "righteous in the sight of God" (Luke 1:6)...a devout woman who has begged God for years for one good thing that God Himself has said is good: a child. She has probably been asking God for this good thing since she was a young married woman, if not before. She must wonder why God does not give her this good thing.

Fast forward many years which must not have seemed fast at all to Elizabeth, and she finally gets the good news she's been waiting for. Unbelievably good news. News so unbelievably good, in fact, that her husband Zechariah does not believe it…and is given something of a divine hand over his mouth in reproof.

Elizabeth, in her old age, is going to have a child...a son who will "bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord" (Luke 1:16,17). (That's quite the opening entry in a baby book.)

As if all this is not good enough, when an expectant Elizabeth is visited by her also-expecting cousin, Mary, Elizabeth's good-news baby literally starts jumping for joy within her: "At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!' " (Luke 1:39-45).

We ask for God for one good thing. But our lavishly good-all-the-time Adonai Tov piles good upon good. At just the right time—not the time when Elizabeth asked but the time when the divine stage was set for good upon good—God gave Elizabeth the good thing she longed for but did it in a multiplying way so that it was also good for someone else: for a frightened teenager who, with a few words from Elizabeth at just the right time, was reassured she was not crazy but blessed.

I ask God for a good thing. He says, "I have a grander kind of good in mind." I say, "But God, this is good enough." And He says, "But I am so much more than a good-enough God."