Goodness is something

I just came back from an amazing inner journey. A four week journey into the nature of good. This journey started, circled, and will never finish. In my favorite Bible commentary, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, „good“ is defined in such a way as to build a life around, and here it comes: "Good. God; Spirit; omnipotence; omniscience; omnipresence; omni-action."

Good is in many languages another word for God, and good is spiritual. This is what I gather from this definition and from life experience. It has to be in order to be reliable, lasting, continuous, impartial. Good has four supreme powers, and these powers are all you can ever ask for. Four „omnis“. So for four weeks I consulted and probed them, finding them to be so comprehensive and profound, universal and enclosing to meet every need and heal every heartbreak.

I have always loved Francis Chan’s deep respect for good, describing himself as being „overwhelmed by a relentless God“ in his book Crazy Love. „It's crazy, if you think about it", he writes. "The God of the universe—the Creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor—loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss."

So an atypical response to God, this candid, overwhelming, creative goodness - you might add to Chan's list foxes, Northern lights, raspberries and the very moment the hurt gives way to forgiveness - is to see good everywhere, honor God everywhere, right? Mary Baker Eddy explores the depth, breadth and height of good in her autobiography, and writes: "God is good, hence goodness is something, for it represents God, the Life of man."

Doesn’t it make a difference for you if you honored every inkling of good as a hunch of something real instead of something personal? What do you feel when you read "...goodness is something..."? Something good?