God's Good Plan

But it was God's good plan to crush Him and cause Him grief..... Isaiah 53:10 NLT

It is God's good plan to crush with pain, to cause death and grief. That feels foreign and somehow wrong, doesn't it? We don't want to believe that God would purposely hurt us, willingly choose to cause us suffering. In our society, in our minds, that is proof He does not love. It is proof He does not care, is not really interested in our personal well-being.
We have stood on the rock of Life-Should-Be-Easy and the foundation of Nice-People-Don't-Hurt-Us. Isn't that how we behave , how we live? We recoil, like some worm stabbed by a fishhook, at the mere thought of someone, let alone God, choosing to wound us. Yet here is God telling us it is His good plan to not just inflict pain, but to crush with pain, to purposely cause grief. Did you hear that? It is His good plan!
How can that be?
How could that possibly be loving or kind or any of the other sweet-gentle things we want God to be?
None of it makes sense to us. We don't like it. We certainly don't want to live that way.
It is only as we look at the world around us that we begin to recognize the truth of crushing and dying being a good thing.

A field is ready for planting only as the farmer harrows it- breaks up and pulverizes the soil.
A seed must be buried and die before it yields a great harvest.
The sand must be melted by intense heat and totally transformed before we can recognize the beauty of a crystal glass.
The coal must be crushed for long ages before the diamond can be formed.
Just as the farmer and the glass blower know it is only the breaking and the heat of flame that brings good results, so our God knows.
It is His love for us that prompts Him to wound. It is His desire to bring out the best in us that allows the flames to lick our hearts. It is His care for us that plows up our lives so there may be a greater harvest. It is His good plan for us that crushes us with grief that there might be life more abundant.
This is a perfect example of my own tendency to peer at the wrong end of the kaleidoscope. I want to focus on the broken bits and then am surprised when I only feel resentment and lack of care.
From God's perspective, those broken bits are what cause the beauty. Without them, there would only be plain glass that gathers dust.
It was when Christ was crushed with suffering and died, that eternal life was born. “When He sees all that is accomplished by His anguish, He will be satisfied. “
Isaiah 53:11 NLT
To writhe in agony, unwillingly, demonstrates a lack of trust in our Sovereign, Mighty, Comforting, Merciful, Redeeming God.
Oh, for the courage to lay our own lives down as an offering, to willingly enter into God's good plan.