God of Wonders: God is Good
Back in 1917, in Pasadena, CA, Frederick Lehman was working in a factory. He knew of a poem, a Jewish poem called the Haddamut written in 1050 by Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai in Worms, Germany. During a short break in his work, he and a colleague took a scrap of paper, sitting on en empty lemon box pushed against the wall and started playing around with some lyrics.
The words of the 3rd stanza came from that Jewish poem and someone, a Jewish immigrant probably, had penciled that poem on the wall of an insane asylum. Here are the words to the English translation of that poem…
Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment made, were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade – to write the love of God above, would drain the ocean dry. Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.
The love and goodness of God. Why do you love your children? Is the simple, basic answer because they are yours? Children don’t have to do anything to prove themselves to us. We love them unconditionally because they are ours. God loves us, not just because we were created by Him, but because He is, in His essence, love.
To say that God is “good” or to say that God is “love” is to say that God is infinite and unlimited in His goodness.
John is appropriately termed the “apostle of love.” Consider just a few verses from his writings: John 15:9-10 – The Father loves the Son; John 3:16 – The Father loves the world; John 16:27 – The Father loves those who love the Son. And Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 9:7 – The Father loves the cheerful giver.
So many times when we see the wrath of God exhibited, there was first exhibited the love and mercy of God. Wicked King Ahab is a great example: First, we observe how wicked Ahab was: 1 Kings 16:30-33 (and the incident with Naboth & his vineyard in chapter 21). Next, we observe how frequently God reached out to Ahab before God finally punished him for his sins:
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#2 – Elijah in 1 Kings 18:1ff
#3 – A prophet in 1 Kings 20:13
#4 – “The” prophet in 1 Kings 20:22
#5 – “A man of God” in 1 Kings 20:28
#6 – “A certain man of the prophets” in 1 Kings 20:42
#7 – Elijah in 1 Kings 21:17-19
Observe 21:25-29
#8 – Micaiah in 1 Kings 22:15ff
King Ahab died according to the word of the Lord in 22:38
Luke 17:3-4
If God loved Ahab with such patient, persistent love, can we not love our brethren in the same way?
–Paul Holland
