God kept you!

Say this with me….“God, when I look back over everything, I can see evidence that You were there.” That realization is important because every part of the year may not have felt good. There may have been disappointment, waiting, uncertainty, prayers that seemed unanswered, and seasons where you found yourself asking, “God, what are You doing?” Yet David says in Psalm 65:11 that God “crowns the year with His goodness.”

When you think about a crown, it sits at the top and represents honor, completion, distinction, and authority. The picture David gives us is that God places His goodness over the year. That does not mean that every event that happened was good, and that distinction matters. Sometimes when we hear the phrase, “God has been good,” we assume that means we have to minimize what hurt us or pretend that everything we experienced was good. But you can acknowledge, “That hurt me. I did not understand that season. I would not choose to go through that again,” and still be able to say, “But God was good to me while I was going through it.”

Sometimes God’s goodness does not look like the removal of the difficult season. Sometimes His goodness looks like the strength He gave you to survive it. It may have looked like someone showing up at exactly the right time. It may have looked like a door closing that you later realized needed to close. It may have looked like unexpected provision, protection you did not recognize at the time, or grace that carried you on the days when you did not know how you were going to keep moving forward.

And sometimes, when you really look back, God’s goodness simply sounds like this: “I survived something I thought was going to take me out.” You may not have understood it while you were in it. You may not have recognized God’s hand while you were crying, waiting, questioning, or trying to make sense of what was happening. But now that you can look back, you can see that even though the season was painful, you were not abandoned in it. God was still providing, still sustaining, still protecting, and still carrying you. That is goodness too. So take a moment to thank God.