The preacher’s voice struck me like an unexpected blow. I had been driving for more than an hour late into the night along U.S. Highway 42, the main route between Louisville, Ky., and Cincinnati. I was hurrying back to the state paper offices after a night session of the Kentucky Baptist Convention annual meeting in order to publish eight pages of the paper the next morning.
My mind was not on the curvy two-lane road or the opening session of the annual meeting that had just concluded. I was thinking about Eleanor, my wife, and our two children, Brent, 4, and Jean, 2.
A few days earlier, the doctor had said Eleanor was ill and needed a serious operation. He said if the operation went well, recuperation would take several weeks. If it did not go well, well …
As I drove along that night, I heard the doctor’s words over and over again. I saw Eleanor’s face as he spoke. I thought about how I would care for the children and every other thing a scared young husband and father can imagine.
Somehow the preacher’s voice grabbed me. The radio had been on for company during the lonely drive, but I had not heard a note or word it blared in more than an hour.
I still do not know who the speaker was, but I will never forget what he said: “At some point in everyone’s life, there comes a time when you have to decide to put your whole weight on Jesus.”
I do not know if the words originated with him or not, but that sentence found a permanent place in my heart.
The words rolled over and over and over in my mind. Could I put my whole weight on Jesus? Could I trust my wife, my children to Jesus’ hands rather than my own?
There was nothing to do but pull off on the side of the road and have a prayer time with the Lord. It involved confession. It involved renewal. It involved commitment as I “put my whole weight on Jesus” and trusted Him with the welfare of my loved ones.
A few months later, Eleanor had the surgery and all went well. The day she came home from the hospital, I bought our first color television. I had promised Eleanor she could recuperate in front of a color TV.
It was the kind of outcome one prays for, an outcome that causes us to praise God and declare His goodness.
Now fast-forward to 1998. The place is UAB Hospital in Birmingham. The day is July 20.
Eleanor and I had arrived back in the United States only 33 hours earlier. We had been medically evacuated from Durban, South Africa, where we were involved in an automobile accident on our way to the airport to return home.
Eleanor had been in a deep coma for six days. She was kept alive by a ventilator, which only prolonged the dying process. Now we were gathered around her bed to tell her goodbye for the final time.
I sat in a wheelchair holding her hand and looked into her bruised and swollen face. Family members circled the bed. We prayed. We sang. We cried. And we “put our whole weight on Jesus” as we entrusted her eternal care to the heavenly Father.
In the days before, I had prayed, probably more earnestly, more pleadingly, even more trustingly, than I had ever prayed before. So had family members and friends literally around the world.
But Eleanor did not get better.
Fifteen minutes after we said our final goodbyes, she slipped quietly into eternity, into the arms of Jesus.
That is not the outcome we had prayed for or wanted. It is not the outcome for which most of us praise God or talk about His goodness.
Yet I know that God was just as good the day Eleanor died as He was the day she came home from the hospital to recover in front of her new color TV.
God’s goodness is not determined by a test result or a doctor’s report or the outcome of a medical procedure.
God’s goodness is not even determined by whether one lives or dies. God is good all the time and in all situations.
God’s goodness is not even determined by our experience. God is good because that is His nature.
The Psalms repeatedly proclaim the goodness of God.
Psalm 34:8 says, “O taste and see that the Lord is good.”
Psalm 106:1 invites us to “praise the Lord. Oh give thanks to the Lord for He is good.”
Psalm 119:68 declares, “You are good and what You do is good.”
Jesus taught that God is good. When the rich young ruler addressed Jesus as “Good Teacher,” Jesus responded, “No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18; Luke 18:18).
The Bible teaches that God does not change (Ps. 102:27; James 1:17) and is the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb. 13:8).
Even God’s name affirms His changeless nature. God revealed His name to Moses as “I Am Who I Am” (Ex. 3:14). He is the pre-existent One, the God of your past — Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of your present and future.
The God who welcomed Eleanor into His eternal abode was the same God who saved her as an elementary-age child, guided her in every part of life, healed her through a complicated surgery and was there when earthly life ended.
Knowing that God is always good gives confidence when one has to “place all your weight on Jesus,” even in death.
Testimonies about God being good because of a desired outcome of a medical test or a favorable doctor’s report may be well intended but they miss the mark. God is good all the time and in all situations.
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