“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.”  Genesis 50:20

When starting a new support group, I ask participants to define a few words.  Two of those words are good and bad.  A quick search provided the following:  good – “to be desired or approved of”; bad – “of poor quality; inferior or defective” and “not such as to be hoped for or desired; unpleasant or unwelcome”.  The synonyms are more direct with words like healthy, fine, sound, fit, robust, sturdy, strong, and vigorous versus substandard, poor, inferior, unsatisfactory, inadequate, unacceptable, imperfect, defective, faulty, and miserable.  These are consistent with participants’ responses.  Admittedly, for a significant portion of my life, I would have agreed with these definitions.   However, God has brought me to the place where I understand that, in our haste to categorize, we are often missing two key components: complete information and perspective.  Specifically we often lack all of the finer details and regularly forget the eternal perspective which can significantly change our overall view of any given condition, situation or trial.  In that light, my health may be substandard, poor and inferior, but I would not classify my situation bad.