Apple pie and the goodness of God

This past week on a cold rainy fall day, I walked into the house. As soon as I approached the kitchen, I could smell that Bev had spent the afternoon engaging in one of her hobbies. The aroma of chicken roasting in the oven filled the room. Something about the aroma made my heart sing.

Several days later I came into the kitchen to the smell of freshly baked apple pie. We were visiting with friends later in the evening and Bev had baked a pie to share with them. When we left, Bev carried the pie to the car. She put her nose toward the pie and inhaled deeply and promptly proclaimed, “I smell the goodness of God!”.

This past weekend we were at our lakefront property in New York to close down the camper and take the docks out for the season. Sunday morning was rather brisk with temperatures in the high teens. Once the sun rose, I cooked breakfast outside and we ate around the fire. Coffee, homefries, bacon, eggs and toast mixed with the smell of wood smoke from the fire and oak leaves on the ground on a crisp morning to create another aroma moment. Everything about that moment pointed to the goodness of God.

The more “God-conscious” I become; the more aware I am of His goodness. The more aware I am of His goodness, the more “God-conscious” I become. I don’t think that God is “any more good” now than in the past. It’s just that I am more aware of it. Neither does the heightened sense of His goodness mean that life is easier than it used to be. I face perhaps more personal struggles than ever. However, the awareness of God’s goodness toward me helps me incredibly in the midst of those struggles.

Last spring, I watched a video for work at our Eastern Sales Meeting. It was done by Dewitt Jones, a photographer for National Geographic. The theme of the video was “Celebrate What’s Right with the World”. At one point he made a profound statement. He spoke of growing up with the philosophy of “I have to see it to believe it”. However, he admitted that philosophy limited him from seeing the potential that really exists. He spoke of a new reality that opened new potential. It was a philosophy of “we need to believe it to see it”.
And so it is with the goodness of God. If we don’t really believe that He is good, we will never see His goodness. We will be stuck in the humdrum of life, missing the aroma of His goodness in apple pies, in wood smoke on a crisp morning, and in the smell of freshly brewed coffee