Summary
Kale (the leafy green vegetable) is good.
Each 100 grams contains 120mg of Vitamin C and 92mg of Phosphorous.
Kale is good for you. It works.
Deep-dish Italian sausage pan pizza is also good.
Desperately hungry, having been lost in the woods for a day, I once ate a deep-dish Italian sausage pan pizza; it was that best thing I’ve ever tasted.
Pizza is a different kind of good—it’s good you can taste.
In Psalm 34 David writes “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
I’ve never heard anyone say, “Eat and drink; taste and see, kale is good.”
Likewise, I’ve never seen anyone take a bite of deep-dish Italian sausage pan pizza and exclaim, “This pizza isn’t working.”
I suppose that, at times, we’ve all thought, “God’s not working; perhaps, he’s not good. Perhaps he’s good for nothing.”
We must think that God is good like kale—good for something…
David writes that God is good like pizza—who cares if it’s good for something; it’s just good. It tastes good.
The Hebrew word translated “good,” can also be translated “beautiful.”
Beauty is good for nothing, it’s just good.
No one looks at a sunset and says, “It’s not working; it’s not good.”
If you need God to be good for something, you probably don’t see that he’s just good—he’s beautiful.
If you need a reason to love him, maybe you don’t love… him.
If kale wasn’t good for something, I wouldn’t eat it.
If God wasn’t good for something; if he were a baby in a manger or a poor naked man nailed to a tree, would you love him?
God creates everything, and at the end of the sixth day, he looks and sees that everything is good, which means that God is the Good in everything that’s anything.
But at the beginning of the sixth day God sees that something is not good.
It is not good that the Adam—Humanity—is alone.
Adam is alone in the presence of God, who is the Good; Adam doesn’t have knowledge of the Good, who is Love, and who is his Helper.
So, God makes Adam, male and female.
Then, he plants a tree in the middle of the garden and another tree in the middle of the garden—it’s two trees that look the same, or one tree that functions like two.
On the tree, or trees, appears to be “the Life” and “the Good in flesh.”
It must look like the tree on which Christ was crucified in a garden on Mt. Calvary.
Do you die if you eat of that tree? Do you live if you eat of that tree? …or both?
Is it evil? … It certainly is the knowledge of evil; evil is taking the life of the Good.
Is it good? … It certainly is the knowledge of good; good is God fore-giving us his very own Life. It is the revelation of the ineffable Beauty that is our Lord.
You don’t judge Beauty; Beauty judges you.
He said, “This is my body broken. This is the covenant in my blood. Eat and drink.”
Do you take in order to make yourself good? That was the snake’s suggestion.
Do you use him, but don’t really like him—kind of like kale?
Or do you adore him and ingest him like deep-dish Italian sausage pan pizza?
God is the good in everything that’s anything.
And he even uses the nothing to cause us to long for the something that is himself.
He uses wilderness wonderings, loneliness, sin and shame, to help us long for mana from heaven, the bread of the presence, the Passover lamb and his body broken and blood shed to help us taste and see that he is good—not just good for everything, just good.
When my boys were little they thought “Hot Wheels” were good—little toy cars, that I could buy at the grocery store for ninety-seven cents apiece.
I loved getting Hot Wheels for my boys, and I could afford every last Hot Wheel on the rack.
And yet sometimes they’d ask for a Hot Wheel and I’d say “no.”
Every parent knows why.
Spoiled children crucify the giver for want of the gift and everything dies.
Spoiled children don’t know that it’s the love of the giver in the gift that makes the gift good.
Spoiled children are unable to taste and see that the Good is Love.
Spoiled children are always alone. And that’s “not good.”
I’d say “no” for I want my sons to taste and see… me.
So, even if I were a baby in a manger, a naked man nailed to a tree, or a senile old codger confined to a bed and unable to purchase one Hot Wheel, they’d still want to come and sit with me—not because I was good for something, but just because they thought I was good.
God isn’t just good for something; taste and see that he is the Good.
Body broken and blood shed, fresh bread and red wine—he is the Good and the Good in you.
One day soon you may feel lost and God may seem to be good for nothing.
One day soon you may have to surrender all good things.
You may even cry “My God, my God, why are you not working? Why have you forsaken me?”
But then you will cry, “Father into your hands I commit my spirit.”
That’s not just you; that’s the Good in you speaking to his Father.
Then, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye everything will be deep-dish Italian sausage pan pizza.
I can’t fully explain all the reasons for all our sufferings.
I can’t fully explain how the cross of Christ works.
I can’t fully explain why God would allow you to get so lost in the woods and feel so hungry at times.
But I do know that he wants you to taste and see: he is Good.