The Extravagant Goodness of God | The Chaplaincy of Poitou Charentes

In my daily readings, one of my favourite New Testament stories came up. It’s from Acts 3, where Peter and John are heading for the Temple in Jerusalem in order to pray. On their way in, they encounter a crippled beggar, who sits there begging every day. They must have seen him before – indeed, Jesus must have seen him too, but for some reason, this seems to be the first time there has been a real encounter with him. He looks at Peter and John when they stop beside him obviously expecting that they’re going to give him money. However, instead, Peter says, “I don’t have any silver or gold to give you, but in the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk!”
Peter gives the man his hand, up he jumps and not only does he walk, but he leaps about, praising God! An amazing transformation, especially as the man had been lame from birth and was now over 40 years old. He’d never walked before, his muscles must have been completely wasted, his brain totally unused to giving the commands to those muscles to enable them to function, and yet he’s able not only to walk immediately but to leap about uninhibited. And that made me think about the extravagant goodness of God.
In that man’s place, I’d have been happy just to be able to get up and walk, maybe hoping to see my moving about improving steadily with practice and exercise, and that’s probably the maximum I would have expected from God in terms of healing; but God does so much more, giving the man an access to energy and ability away beyond what would have been sufficient. That made me think about other examples of the extravagant goodness of God.
We see it around us in creation: here in Poitou-Charentes, we’re surrounded by beautiful countryside and an amazing array of flora and fauna. I was thrilled the other day to see a bird I’d never seen before, climbing up one of our apple trees. It was vividly marked in black, white and red, and on looking it up I discovered that it was a woodpecker. However, identification was made more difficult by the fact that this variety of woodpecker comes in three different forms – greater spotted, medium spotted and lesser spotted. I came to the conclusion that it was a lesser spotted woodpecker, but I could have been wrong as they all look very alike, the main difference being in their relative size. Whichever one it was, it was wonderful to see, and it made my day. How extravagantly good of God to make not just one type of spotted woodpecker, but at least three varieties in our area alone!
We see the extravagant goodness of God in provision as well. He has set us in a world that is designed to provide an abundance of good things for the creatures who inhabit it, even in its fallen state. Sadly, human greed and other factors often lead to some experiencing want and need, but even then, there is still enough to go round if we would only share the world’s resources. Alongside this general provision, the Bible is full of examples of God’s direct and often miraculous provision for His people. We’ve already seen the healing provided for the lame beggar, but every narrative book of the Bible has examples of amazing provision for every area of need, and many of us can testify to having experienced God’s provision in our lives at one time or another.
The most amazing expression of the extravagant goodness of God, however, is in salvation. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5; 8) God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3; 16) Jesus, having loved His disciples, loved them to the last. (John 13; 10) The verses could be multiplied, but these three are sufficient to illustrate the extravagant goodness of God in reaching out to a lost world in love and mercy, to draw us to Himself and bring us into life in all its fulness, a daily walk with Him where He shares our joys and sorrows, our pleasures and our pains, our ups and,. downs, and in it all bringing a freshness and a richness that we never knew without Him. He’s only a prayer away, and as we reach out to Him, He can do abundantly more than we can ask or imagine. (Ephesians 3; 20). God is good; God is extravagantly good, and He loves to bring that into our experience as we trust Him just as that lame beggar did. Are you up for a bit of walking and leaping and praising God?