The Ultimate Good

There has been at least one time in your life when you were getting ready to experience something that you felt was too good to exist, and seemed maybe a little too good for you and your life. Because if "it" were to happen to you, it would change everything. If you could just land this opportunity, just receive this one thing just this one time - if you could just step into this new thing, you know everything after would be different; life would become something altogether different.

You have experienced at least one of these moments in your life. These moments feel just like magic. With no negative consequences, no repercussions, no compromise and no side effects - the thing you had hoped for came true - just like beautiful magic.

This is the goodness of God, every part along the way. The anticipation, the delivery, and every single moment in between; the very thing you thought too good to be true for you came true...for you. "

God creates these moments for us. They are gifts given to us, gifts so good you struggle to not sound a little silly explaining them. They are so good, and so pure that they are impossible to make someone else understand how deep, meaningful and good they are.

But what is the essence of that moment, this "goodness of God" this...feeling? Is it just high hopes and great expectations? Only partly. But it has to be something more because this time you received exactly just what you had believed for; unlike so many false and forced deliveries in life, this one came true beautifully. Without strife, without manipulation, without 'making it work', this one fell perfectly into its perfect place.

The world always underdelivers; it's called hype. But this experience is truly something different. You now have it forever in your mind and heart. Something you will always have, even when everything else in the world continues to feel normal, routine, mediocre.

What if the "goodness of God" was not just a gift, but actually God himself? His presence, right there in the room with you. Just as you were about to step into your dream, your miracle, he was there urging you to "just keep going."

Jesus Christ came into this world to bring just this: these exact moments. These life altering experiences. He came to create with you, plan a new course with you, to be with you.

His short time here on earth is filled with these experiences. But like you trying to explain your own magical moment to your close friends, whispering over the table in hushed excitement, explaining with the same original amazement you had at first, you know that your story actually started long before it became reality, when it was just a dream with merely 'a fool's hope.' This is where he lives, in these moments. Too good for you to do in your own power, too special for it to be merely the sum of your planning and execution.

When you read the times when Jesus' interacts with people - a broken woman here, or a gravely ill man there - these people experienced the very same moment you had. This moment - "Could this really be true?" "Could I really have this?" "Could I simply forget everything that has come before, and go forward in this new thing?"

What else is could he do? What adventure is he calling me into? And what really sets him apart from all the other times and things where something happened, but didn't happen this way?

What makes him the ultimate Good?

...At dawn he appeared again to the people in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"

"No one, sir", she said.

"Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

The goodness of God came for us, to save us, and be with us. This goodness of God, that we all have tasted, is ready to help us choose him, and to be with him forever. He's ready to protect to us, take us in, and build you a brand new life. Are you ready to give up your life, leave everything, and choose him? Are you ready to completely give yourself to, and trust the ultimate good?