Beauty in the Storm: Believing in the Goodness of God
One morning recently, I decided to watch the sunrise at the beach.
I expected pastel colors of light stretching across the water and one of those beautiful Florida mornings that make it easy to pause and thank God.
Instead, it was stormy.
The clouds were dark; there was thunder and rain in the distance. It wasn't what I pictured, but the sunrise was still there. The storm seemed to hide the sunrise, but the light was still peeking through. And there was something beautiful in that too. Although clouds covered the sunrise, it didn't change the fact that the sun was still rising.
A sunrise is steady and consistent. It makes me think there are moments when I can see God and feel Him so close, and other times when circumstances make it harder to connect with Him. But it doesn't change the truth that He is still consistent and present. He is always faithful, even when we cannot see the full picture.
Jesus showed His authority over creation when He calmed the storm. The disciples were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!” (Matthew 8:27). The motion of the universe, the rhythm of the tides, and the arrival of morning are beyond our control, but they are not beyond His. We are not as powerful as we sometimes imagine ourselves to be and thankfully, we do not have to be. God is bigger than we are.
People can be inconsistent. Circumstances can change without warning, and what we see in front of us may not tell the whole truth. We cannot always place our confidence in people or in what is visible, but we can trust the consistency of God’s character.
Each sunrise we witness is also a witness to us: another day has been given. There is breath in our lungs. There is still purpose, something to learn, someone to love, and something to do for the glory of God. Morning does not promise that the day will be easy, but it reminds us that our story is still being written.
I think that is sometimes what believing in the goodness of God looks like. It is easy to call God good when the sky is painted in our favorite colors and life is unfolding according to our plans. "It requires a deeper trust to believe He is still good when the clouds gather, the answer is delayed, or the journey looks nothing like what we asked Him for."
Maybe we miss some of the beauty of God because we are waiting for the perfect picture. We expect Him to appear in a particular way, at a particular time, with no clouds or interruptions. Yet He is present in all things if we slow down long enough to notice.
Think about how the beach changes throughout the day. At sunrise, someone may come seeking quiet, prayer, or a new beginning. Later, families arrive carrying chairs and toys. Someone else comes to exercise, grieve, celebrate, think, or simply escape the noise for a while. A couple may come and share their first kiss while another may be sharing their last. The traffic changes. The light and weather changes. Each person experiences the same beach from a different perspective.
Life is much the same. We do not all stand in the same place or arrive for the same reason. What feels like an interruption to us may become someone else’s moment of grace. Our perspective is real, but it is not the whole picture. Perhaps part of seeing God in all things is becoming willing to look again from where we are, and sometimes through the eyes of someone whose experience is different from ours.
A Father Who Gives Good Gifts
In Matthew 7, Jesus tells His listeners to ask, seek, and knock. Then He gives them a picture they can understand: a loving parent would not hand a child a stone when the child asked for bread. His point is not that God will give us everything we request exactly when and how we request it. His point is that the heart of the Father is good.
God is not playing games with us. We are invited to come honestly with our needs, questions, disappointment, and hope.
Sometimes the good gift looks different from what we imagined. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it is no. Sometimes it is not yet. "Faith does not require us to pretend disappointment does not hurt. It gives us a safe place to bring that hurt. Believing in God’s goodness is not denying the storm. It is trusting that the storm does not change His character."
Matthew 7 then moves from receiving the Father’s goodness to extending goodness to others: “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12). What God pours into us was never meant to stop with us. His goodness becomes mercy in our hands. It becomes patience, generosity, truth spoken with love, a meal shared, a need noticed, or a safe place offered to someone who is hurting.
What if our lives became evidence of the goodness we say we believe?
Matthew 7 concludes the Sermon on the Mount with a beautiful both/and. God is a good Father who invites us to ask, seek, and knock, and we are called to live differently because we know Him. "We do not obey to earn His goodness; our lives begin to bear good fruit because we have received it. Grace and obedience are not opposites. Obedience grows from grace."
Jesus closes with the picture of two builders. Both houses experience rain, rising water, and wind. Following Jesus does not mean storms will never come. The difference is the foundation. The wise person hears the words of Jesus and puts them into practice (Matthew 7:24–27). "A life rooted in Him can be shaken without being destroyed. His goodness comforts us, and His truth changes us."
When Religion Becomes a Weight
The world of Jesus was deeply religious. The Pharisees took Scripture, holiness, and obedience seriously. Yet Jesus confronted religious leaders when devotion became performance, when rules were used to measure worth, or when outward correctness left no room for mercy.
Religious pressure can take root in any heart. We may begin to believe that we must pray perfectly, serve constantly, look strong, have every answer, or hide every struggle. Other people may place demands on us, and eventually we carry those demands as though they came from God. We exhaust ourselves trying to prove that we are faithful enough, useful enough, spiritual enough, or good enough.
Have you ever mistaken religious pressure for the voice of God?
"The gospel is not an invitation to perform our way into His presence. It is an invitation to Jesus. We do not need a more polished version of ourselves before we come to Him. We need Him."
“I Desire Mercy, Not Sacrifice”
In Matthew 9, Jesus calls Matthew, a tax collector, and shares a meal with people the religious community labeled “sinners.” When the Pharisees question why He would sit with them, Jesus tells them that the sick need a physician. Then He says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13), quoting Hosea 6:6.
In Hosea’s day, people continued religious rituals while their love and faithfulness had become shallow. God was not saying that prayer, worship, fasting, or service were meaningless. He was exposing worship that had become disconnected from His heart.
Mercy reveals whether our worship is shaping us to resemble the One we worship.
We can attend church, quote Scripture, give, fast, and serve yet still overlook the hurting person beside us. Jesus continually brings us back to relationship with God and with one another.
True worship is not merely what happens during a song on Sunday. It is how we live on Monday. It is choosing honesty over image, compassion over judgment, forgiveness over pride, and presence over convenience. It is worshiping all of who God is not only seeking what He can do for us when it fits our plans.
Is the way I worship making me more merciful?
His Life Woven Into Ours
Scripture says that anyone who is in Christ is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). This does not mean we instantly become flawless or never struggle again. It means our identity and the direction of our lives have changed. We belong to Jesus, and He is forming something new in us.
I sometimes think of it as His spiritual DNA being woven into us. Not that we become God, but that as we remain in Christ, His character becomes increasingly recognizable in our lives. Jesus describes it in John 15 as branches remaining in the vine. A branch does not strain to manufacture life. It stays connected to its source, and fruit grows from that connection.
"As we seek His presence, His compassion begins to shape how we see people. His patience changes how we respond. His truth reveals what needs healing, and His grace gives us room to grow. Jesus does not ignore what is broken in us, but neither does He reduce us to our brokenness. He meets us, sees us fully, and invites us forward."
God’s kindness leads us toward repentance (Romans 2:4). His goodness does not excuse us from growth; it creates a place where honest transformation can begin.
Beauty in the Storm
We often want the promise without the process. We want resurrection without waiting, a promised land without a wilderness, or a rainbow without rain.
Yet much of Scripture was written by people learning to trust God in uncertainty. Even the words in Jeremiah about God’s plans to give His people hope and a future were spoken to people living in exile. The promise was real, but it did not erase the waiting.
This does not mean every storm is sent by God or that every painful event will make sense. It means pain does not have the authority to declare God absent. Storms can slow us down enough to notice what hurry concealed. They can deepen our compassion, strip away our illusion of control, and teach us to receive help. Sometimes, right in the middle of them, we discover a kind of beauty we would never have chosen to look for.
Enjoying the journey does not mean enjoying every loss, inconvenience, betrayal, or unanswered question. It means refusing to postpone all peace until life becomes easy. It means receiving today’s grace and believing God can still meet us on a stormy beach.
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Perhaps someone needs the encouragement you almost did not send. Perhaps someone needs a meal, a conversation, a second chance, or simply the gift of being seen without judgment. We do not have to solve every problem. We can offer what we have and allow God’s goodness to move through ordinary acts of love.
The sunrise does not cease to exist when the sky is stormy. "The promises of God do not disappear when the journey becomes difficult. His timing may not be ours, and His answer may not arrive in the package we expected. But we can continue to ask, seek, and knock because the One on the other side of the door is good."
As we remain in Jesus, His goodness will not only sustain us. It will be woven into the way we live, the way we love, and the way we bless others for their good and for His glory.
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