Have you ever noticed the seven-fold use of the word “good” on the first page of the Bible?  This caught my eye again recently as I was studying the first chapter of Genesis this week. The light was “good”, the dry ground and the seas were “good”, the plants and seed bearing trees were “good”, the lights in the heavens were “good”, the fish and the birds were “good”, the animals were “good” and then, after making man in His image as the crowing glory of His creation – God saw all that He had made and it was “very good!”

Some would say that the number seven in the Bible is often associated with the “perfections of God.”  Surely this must be true in Genesis chapter 1 – before there is any hint that God’s perfect world would be infiltrated by a virus far, far worse than Corona.  And yet, even with the unparalleled beauty and magnificence of the God-image defaced by the devastating onslaught of the curse of sin – the overwhelming testimony of the character of the One “for whom and through whom everything exists” (Heb 2:10) remains perfectly “good!”

David asks us in Ps 34:8 to, “Taste and see that the LORD is good”

The psalmist exhorts us in Ps 107:1 to, “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good.”

When a certain ruler approaches Jesus and says, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus says to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God.”

And so, with the unquestionable goodness of God as ammunition for godly living – Paul assures us that, “in all things God works for the GOOD of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

Isn’t it GOOD to know that no matter what might lie ahead along the road of our lives – as the psalmist says in Ps 73:8...

“But as for me, the nearness of God is my good;
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
That I may tell of all Your works.”