GodSprings - January 6, 2016

God: My All In All

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart

    and my portion forever. Psalm 73.26(NIV)

On January 17, 2004, a 66-ton whale died and was beached on the southwestern coast of Taiwan, near the city of Tainan. Two weeks later, on January 29, authorities decided to truck the dead whale to a laboratory where they could do an autopsy. It took 50 laborers and three lifting cranes 13 hours to hoist the 56-foot behemoth onto a flatbed trailer truck.

And then it happened. As the truck crawled through that downtown region, with crowds looking on, the whale exploded. That's right, it blew up. The inner conditions of the dead mammal, combined with the bumps in the road caused an eruption that the townspeople will not soon forget. Cars, people, and local shops were splattered with whale entrails. Traffic was brought to a halt for hours. The smell was almost unbearable.

Isn't that just like life sometimes? You're going about your business, and a whale explodes. You didn't see that coming. You didn't plan for it. You certainly don't welcome it. What do you do when with your theology clashes with reality? How do you hold to the conviction that God is good when life stinks.

Asaph's (author of this psalm) basic premise was correct: God is good. But when he pondered the success of the wicked and the sorrows of the righteous, he began to falter in his faith. It seemed that he was wasting his time and energy being faithful to God because the unfaithful received all the blessings. He did not realize that what he called "good" was not what God would call "good."

The turning point came when he went into the sanctuary and started looking at things from God's viewpoint. The psalmist had tested and experienced the beauty, glory, and excellency of the Lord; that is why he could proclaim that there was nothing or no one in all the earth that he wanted or treasured more than God.

Do I need to change my viewpoint? Asaph did and realized God is All in All.