It’s Friday.

It’s the last day of what has been a long week.

It’s the day when many people feel as if they’re getting to the weekend on fumes.

The idea of living on mission can seem overwhelming and draining, so let me give you a mission statement that is only two words long. I think it’s something that every follower of Jesus can accomplish.

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. (Isaiah‬ ‭60:1‬ ‭NIV, emphasis mine)

Rise.

Shine.

Rise and shine. Words that every child has heard from a mom or a dad. Getting up isn’t the win, but it’s half of it. Shining in the bed isn’t the win because people won’t see the light.

The win comes when the rise and the shine go together.

So today, accept the mission that we’ve been given by the Father of lights. It’s only 2 words, and when they go together, something extraordinary happens.

Rise and shine, y’all.

One of the most commonly asked questions is, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” It’s a fair question, but I don’t think it’s the right question. Here’s why.

There aren’t any good people

If we were going to rank people on a goodness scale, where would we put Jesus? I mean, Hitler has to be at the bottom of that scale, right, and then people like Mother Theresa would be at the other end. But wouldn’t Jesus be the best good person on that scale? A leader in the religion of Jesus’ day thought so, and so he addressed Him as Good Teacher.

The response given by Jesus is worth paying attention to. “Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked him. “Only God is truly good.” (‭‭Luke‬ ‭18:19‬ ‭NLT, emphasis mine)

Only God is good. Jesus’ words, not mine. So, the world isn’t divided into good people and bad people, but people and a good God. So bad things don’t happen to good people or bad people, but people. All of us experience different degrees of the same burns: sickness, death, pain, loss, unanswered questions, injustice, and the list could go on. These are things that are common to all people, not just bad people. That leads us to the second reason the “bad things to good people” is a bad question.

We’ll never be good enough

That question implies that there is the possibility of being so good that nothing bad will happen to us. When we experience something that hurts, we begin trying to understand where the formula broke down. “But, I did everything right, so why is this bad thing happening? Why would a bad thing happen to a good person like me? Maybe I wasn’t good enough?”

The truth is that we’ll never be good enough, but the life of Jesus points us to this one undeniable truth: if anyone was good enough to be exempt from suffering, it would have been Jesus, and He suffered more than any of us.

He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. (Isaiah‬ ‭53:3-5‬ ‭NLT, emphasis mine)

If you keep reading that chapter, you’ll find more. He was oppressed, treated harshly, slaughtered, condemned unjustly. One translation says that “His life was cut short in midstream.” Sounds like what we say when someone is taken too soon from us, doesn’t it? This is what happened to the best Who ever walked the planet. The same Jesus who said not to call Him good. The same Jesus who knew that suffering has a purpose.

Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered. (‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭5:8‬ ‭NLT, emphasis mine)

This doesn’t mean that Jesus was a bad person who had to be taught a lesson by a mean God, but rather that, like us, Jesus experienced suffering — bad things — that made Him even more reliant on a good Father. His faith in His Father grew as He suffered.

It’s not only true of Jesus, but those of us who follow Him.

These (trials) have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (‭‭1 Peter‬ ‭1:7‬ ‭NIV‬‬, emphasis mine)

Bad things happen to all people, and when they do, we try to figure out how to be good enough so that we won’t have to experience anything else bad. Maybe the more important question is, “Why do bad things happen to godly people?”

The answer to that question is simple, although not easy. It is the response of the godly in the fire that testifies to the ungodly about a hope greater than the fire.

“Look!” Nebuchadnezzar shouted. “I see four men, unbound, walking around in the fire unharmed! And the fourth looks like a god!” (Daniel‬ ‭3:25‬ ‭NLT, emphasis mine)

The fire reveals the Father. It reveals the Father to us as we’re in the fire, and to others who see us in the fire. That simple truth doesn’t answer the questions, but it does provide purpose.

And when the flames are raging, purpose is a powerful shield.

Have you ever felt the paralysis of analysis? The inability to move forward because you don’t feel like you’re 100% ready? That’s how I’ve felt for the majority of my life about writing.

It wasn’t for a lack of confirmation. Nearly every time I would write something, I’d get positive feedback. Shoot, even the negative feedback confirmed that what I’d written had been done in a way that was worthy of an alternate response.

But I could never keep at it. Writing consistently was difficult and felt forced because I was worried about not saying the right thing in the right way. I wanted to display my gift perfectly, and yet I only wanted to craft my gift privately.

There’s a place for that. Rehearsal rooms, journals, and other outlets where we can dare greatly without the risk of worldwide public humiliation. But no matter how long we practice something privately, there comes a time that we have to display what we’ve prepared publicly.

Seth Godin does that every day, and it was a quote from him that I read at the end of 2020 that inspired me to finally begin working on my craft in a more public and consistent way. Thank you, Seth, for the wisdom of simply writing something every single day. I am a better writer today than I was 237 days ago when this journey began.

And thank you to all who continue to respond to what I write each day. I’ll leave you with the same quote that got me going, and I pray that it motivates you to begin risking in front of others in order to master the gifts God gave you for them.

“Writer’s block isn’t hard to cure. Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better. Do it every day. Every single day. If you know you have to write something every single day, even a paragraph, you will improve your writing. If you’re concerned with quality, of course, then not writing is the problem, because zero is perfect and without defects. Shipping nothing is safe.” (Seth Godin)