Find the Goodness

Sandy Kreider
Sep 12, 2022
3 min read

I just had lunch with a friend I've known since high school. She knows me inside and out and has seen the good, the bad and the really ugly in my life. In many ways we are so different but in the important ways, the ways that bind us together, we are very alike.

We're good for each other in that, when I'm down she knows how to lift me up and vice versa. Our times together, though not frequent, are so productive because we walk away encouraged and carrying less burdens. But today was different. We both walked in exhausted. Our teens are struggling in so many ways, her job is so stressful, my puppy is pooping all over the house, summer is ending and we're both dreading the busyness of the holidays and the cold gray of winter etc etc. After we unloaded all our stuff on each other she said, "I'm sorry Sand, I don't mean to be such a downer." And all I could say was, "I'm right down there with ya."

We both sat with our heads in our hands and it felt so hopeless . . . and wrong. I knew that this was not how God wanted that lunch to end. We switched gears and I told her about the blog I was starting and the title, "Glimpses of Goodness." And as I explained the meaning behind the name I remembered . . . as believers we aren't promised that our teens will grow up to also believe and that they'll be protected from mental illness, and our cars won't stop working and life will just be easy. Instead, it's hard. I might have used my favorite Christian curse word "crap" a few times. Cause it's a crap shoot. But we can experience the hard in a different way . . . by looking for the glimpses of goodness God sends us.

From there I felt a shift in the conversation as we began to remind each other of where we need to fix our eyes, our thoughts and our hearts . . . not on the hard and the mess and the disappointments, but on Jesus. We will stay down in the dumps if we keep our eyes down. If we look up and focus on the goodness we can live differently.

"Since then you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things." Colossians 3:1-2

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Some of my glimpses of goodness this week . . .

A walk in the woods . . .