The goodness of the Lord

I keep waiting for the goodness of the LORD to feel safe.

I believe in it—I do.

I write it in the margins of my Bible

and circle it like a promise I’m afraid to touch too hard.

But believing that His goodness is ahead of me

means admitting I’m not done walking yet.

And some days, my feet are tired.

I’ve learned how to survive.

How to breathe through the ache.

How to carry loss with a straight back and a quiet mouth.

But hope…hope requires movement.

Hope assumes there is more ground to cover,

more light to meet,

more life waiting beyond the place where I stopped expecting joy.

“The land of the living.”

That phrase used to sound obvious.

Now it sounds daring.

Because grief has a way of shrinking the map.

It convinces you that everything good is behind you— that the best moments have already been spent, that laughter was for another version of you, that joy belongs to people who haven’t buried dreams.

But the LORD keeps whispering,

Look forward.

Not past the pain.

Not around the sorrow.

But through it.

He does not promise the absence of wounds—

He promises His goodness will meet me while I am still breathing.

While my heart still beats in a chest that has known breaking.

While my eyes still wake up to mornings I didn’t ask for.

His goodness is not waiting for me to be healed first.

It is ahead of me as I am.

Bruised faith.

Tear-soaked prayers.

Hope that trembles instead of stands tall.

Because if His goodness is ahead of me,

then this road—this hard, holy road—

is not punishment.

It is passage.

Grief may walk beside me,

but it does not get the final word.

Loss may have marked me,

but it does not get to define the future.

The LORD intends for me to see His goodness.

Not in eternity only.

Not someday.

Not after everything stops hurting.

But here.

Now.

In the land where hearts still break

and still beat.

Where sorrow and mercy coexist.

Where the living learn—slowly, painfully—

how to hope again.

So today,

with shaking hands,

I take one step forward.

Not because I am brave.

But because He is good.

And He has gone ahead of me.

And if He says goodness is there—

then I will keep walking

until my eyes meet it.

Psalm 27:13–14 “I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.”