I love the name of those little licorice candies with the sugar coating. They call them Good and Plenty. Reminds me of God—He’s not only good; He’s good and plenty.
In Psalm 100, the Psalmist exhorts us to be thankful to God; and at the end of the Psalm, he gives us a good reason for doing that. He says, “Be thankful to Him…for the Lord is good.” The goodness of God is one of His marvelous attributes. In fact, He can’t do anything that isn’t good—which is why Paul says in Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God….”
This word “good” in Psalm 100 is the Hebrew word tov, which is the basic word for goodness in its widest sense. It is sometimes translated by words like “beautiful; pleasant; lovely; excellent.” In fact this is the word used at the end of the creation account in Genesis 1:31, where it says “And God saw all that He had made and behold, it was very good.” Tov me’od—“very good.” It was excellent and beautiful, and pleasant, and lovely.
I know there a lot of bad things around us in our world. But listen—that isn’t God’s doing. When God made the world it was good. It was man who corrupted it by all his sin and disobedience to God. Yet God can even turn bad things into good things when we trust our circumstances to Him. Listen. If God is in it, it’s bound to turn out good, “For the Lord is good.”
Say—why not stop right now and thank God for His goodness!