sure life

God is so good.

I think that often when I reflect on my many acts of indifference or even outright unfaithfulness to him. Those things don’t change God one iota, they just disappear without a ripple in the ocean of his love for me.

God explains this in his own word in Ezekiel 18:21-23: "But if a wicked person turns away from all the sins they have committed and keeps all my decrees and does what is just and right, that person will surely live; they will not die. None of the offenses they have committed will be remembered against them. Because of the righteous things they have done, they will live. Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign Lord. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?”

It amazes me that, far from the wrathful God of judgment caricatured by the world and preached by too many churches, God is first of all a God of love. The wrath is held until the last possible moment, because God wants to give sinners every chance to live.

Think of it: God takes no pleasure in the death of wicked people. America danced in the streets when Osama bin Laden was killed, but God didn’t. He wasn’t pleased when Adolph Hitler or Saddam Hussein died either. Their deaths delivered them completely into the judgment God doesn’t want for anyone.

Instead, God would have been pleased to welcome into heaven these men, and Jeffrey Dahmer and Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the man who drove his rented cargo truck down two kilometers of sidewalk in Nice, France. Had they truly converted and put their faith in Jesus, even their heinous, criminal sins would not have been remembered by God.

Far from being offended at the thought of sharing heaven with such wicked people, I’m reassured. God’s love is sufficient. My worst acts won’t turn him off. If I cling to him, however weakly and one-handed, he won’t ever let me go.

God is so good.