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I Believe That I Shall Look Upon the Goodness of the Lord by Patience Griswold

By Anonymous
“I know that God is good, but it doesn’t feel that way right now.” So many Christians throughout history have uttered this cry, or something similar. Job did, Paul did, the Prophets did, the Psalmists did. Each of them experienced real suffering and had reason to cry out to the Lord, and each of them saw and felt the faithfulness of God in the midst of their suffering. 


In Psalm 27, David writes, “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living! Wait for the LORD; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!” In the midst of suffering, it can be easy to forget that God is good right now and we behold his goodness, not only when we see him face to face in eternity, but also in our lives on a daily basis. The goodness of God is not merely something that exists at some future point in time. It is a present reality, one that shapes our very existence. David’s cry “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD” is a cry of faith rooted in a desire to see more of who God is. 

It is a beautiful, comforting truth that God does not change. Because he does not change, we do not wait for God to be good; we wait for eyes to see the goodness of the Lord. We wait for glimpses of his goodness, just as David does in Psalm 27 when he says, “One thing I ask of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple,” or “Your face, LORD, do I seek. Hide not your face from me.” Sometimes we do not see God’s goodness because we do not have eyes to see it. 

This is not to minimize the reality of suffering or to ignore the fact that it really is hard to feel and believe God’s goodness in our own lives at times. Sometimes our vision is clouded by circumstances that are truly overwhelming. Scripture uses imagery that vividly describes the intensity of the suffering that we go through in a fallen world—“The waters are up to my neck” (Psalm 69:1) “I flood my bed with weeping” (Psalm 6:6) “[God] will not let me get my breath” (Job 9:18). Scripture does not in any way deny that suffering is viscerally real. Instead, it points us to the source of our comfort and gives us the truth that we must cling to in the face of hardship as we ask Him to help us see Him more. God is good and he does not change. In a world that is broken and hurting, may we be given eyes to see God’s goodness and hearts to point others toward Him!

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