Daily Manna · Day 83 · March 24
Working Together
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
Somebody will say this verse to you at a funeral, and it will land like a brick.
Picture the room. Folding chairs, a table of food nobody is eating, and a person who means well entirely, holding your arm, saying all things work together for good. And you are standing there knowing that what happened was not good, and that you would be lying if you agreed, and that you cannot say so here.
So read what Paul wrote rather than what gets said in that room. He stops short of saying each thing is good. He says all things work together, which is a claim about a process and its result, not about the individual pieces going into it. He puts two fences around it: to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. And then, crucially, he defines the good in the very next sentence, so nobody has to guess. Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son. That is the good. Not a better outcome, not a lesson, not a silver lining. Being made like Christ. Which is a harder promise than the one people quote, and a considerably better one, because it does not require you to call the death a good thing in order to believe it.
Nothing is wasted. Not everything is explained. Those are two different sentences and Paul only wrote the first.
So do not hand it to your grieving friend this week. Sit down, bring food, stay past the point where it gets awkward, and leave the verse alone.
And then, for yourself, the question that is actually yours to answer: if the good God has committed to is being made like His Son, is that a good you would have chosen, or one you would have argued with?
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 83 is Both to Will (Philippians 2:13).