it takes great courage to believe in goodness…be courageous
And I peel squash and there is God and yada, yada, yada.
And yadah, it’s Hebrew, and it literally means to hold out the hand in four ways:
1. to bemoan with this wringing of hands.
2. or to revere with an extending of hands.
And this too on the page of the Strong’s Concordance:
3. Yadah means to confess.
4. Yadah means to give thanks.
Yadah – the whisper of Psalms 92:1: It is a good thing to [yada] — give thanks – and sing praises to unto thy name, O most High.
And in the midst of genocides and suicides, the divorce and disease, the death and dark, we understand the yada all around us, the holding up of fists at God instead of extending the hand in thanks and we empathize with the unbeliever’s confusion, because it’s our own confusion, and in this struggle to be grateful to God for always and for everything, we pray with humble earnestness for the unbeliever: because before a Good God haven’t we all been been momentary unbelievers?
And yet there it is, and you hear it now, at the cusp of the feasting, the yada, yada, yada, that sings relentless and bold:
We won’t stop confessing He is good and we won’t stop thanking Him for grace and we won’t stop holding out our hands — and taking His hand. We won’t stop believing that “God is good” is not some trite quip for the good days but a radical defiant cry for the terrible days.
That “God is good” is not a stale one-liner when all’s happy but a saving lifeline when all’s hard.
And we will keep giving thanks, yada, yada, yada, because giving thanks is only this: making the canyon of pain into a megaphone to proclaim the ultimate goodness of God.
And every time I give thanks, I confess to the universe the goodness of God.
Thanksgiving in all things accepts the deep mystery of God through everything.
– Ann Voskamp
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