The Walking Stick Journal

Stepping Stones of Transformation

An Unfolding Manuscript

by

C.D. Baker

Chapter Nine: Goodness and Wildflowers

Goodness and love are intertwined. Without goodness, love is meaningless; without love, goodness is incoherent. When we witness compassion, comfort, or kindness, we know that goodness is near and delivering blessing through the experience of love. 

Therefore, if God is love, then God must be good. And if God is good, then all that he made is good.

Like love, goodness is beautiful. And so we can discover the beauty of love and of goodness in God’s handiwork—if we are willing to see.

But some of us resist the goodness of God. Why? Are we blind to something? Is goodness just too unfamiliar? Is it pride? Is there something about goodness that makes us suspicious? Are we afraid? 

***

March-April 2020

Today I told Bill that my tinnitus has been so bad that I think I might lose my mind. 

He was sympathetic. “Covid is making life all the more difficult for anybody struggling with anything.”  

My jaw tightens. “Any kind of suffering adds to my suspicions about God. I’d say that underneath all of my anxiety…even my fear of death…is terror of him.” I exhale.  

“If God is not good, then we’re all in trouble.” Bill crosses his leg and interlocks his fingers on his lap. “What would it mean for you to believe in a God who is good?”

I tense.

“Do you ever feel his comfort…his kindness, his compassion?”

The way my head was mysteriously spared in the horse accident comes to mind. “Yes.” I chew on the inside of my cheek. “But if I’m honest, something inside resists seeing him that way.” I stare out of the window to my left. I wish it wasn’t like this. 

I return to Bill and we look at each other for a long moment.  A troubling question suddenly rises within: Do I even want God to be good?

***

Friday, April 3, 2020

Today is pleasantly warm with a little chill that keeps me alert. My well-worn creek-side path meanders ahead, mud-brown between the early green blush of the woodland floor. I grip my faithful walking stick as I wrestle with my resistance to God’s goodness. A distracting, seemingly unrelated nudge prompts me from somewhere deep. Ask God how he sees me and not the other way around. 

I exhale, considering, and then stop walking. Okay, let’s see what this is about… “God, who do you say that I am?” 

I’m uneasy. I’m well-aware that the question should be asked the other way around, but I have a sense that the Spirit doesn’t care about proper theology as much as I do. On the other hand, I’m guessing that she’s about to answer with a scolding litany of my many failures.

Braced in the silence that follows, I walk about fifty more yards listening for who-knows-what under the tall skeletons of leafless trees. I can feel that an answer is coming. My hand is tight around my walking stick. 

And then it happens.

I emerge in a clearing and my inner eye opens. I’m suddenly enabled to see, differently. Sprawled before me is a carpet of yellow wildflowers boasting their fresh blooms. I’m drawn to one sprouting boldly at the edge of the sunlit patch. 

I look at my new friend. “A wildflower?” Astonished, I glance upwards. “That’s who you say that I am?” I return my eyes to the yellow flower. Fragile yet cared for, blessed with a dignified beauty; graced as the springtime vanguard of the waking woodland. 

I feel divine presence; I feel goodness in the beauty. 

His goodness. 

His love.

I close my swelling eyes. “Thank you.”

***

As per usual, the next morning my ego-self—that collection of false beliefs about who I am and how I need to be—begins to doubt the whole experience. The false self wants to control everything because it’s terrified of the untamed More that is always knocking on the door of my soul. 

Discouraged, I fill my coffee cup and open a book by George MacDonald. I take a sip and settle into my chair, sighing. The very first words my eyes fall upon are, “God sees each of us as a beautiful flower in his garden.”

I laugh out loud, put down my coffee and close my eyes. If this is who God is, maybe he’s good after all.

I sit with that thought for a long moment before mumbling, “What would it mean for me if God really is good?” Before I can take my next breath, the dark resistance swells. I stare ahead as the hard truth hits me: Somewhere down deep, a part of me does not want God to be good.