“If God wills nothing but our best good, and if He has the power always to get what He wills, and if He makes no mistakes about what is in fact our best good, then it necessarily follows, it infallibly follows, it follows with certainty, that all things work together for good for us.

All things, even death—Especially death.

Romans 8:28 is both the hardest verse in the Bible for us to believe to be true and at the same time the most certain verse in the Bible to be true.

It is the most certain because it necessarily follows from the infinite goodness, power and wisdom of God.

Yet it is the hardest to believe because it doesn’t look like it’s true. We certainly don’t see all things working together for good. Did Job? Did Jesus’ disciples when he was crucified? Of course not. Why not? Because, we’re not God. That was God’s answer to Job. And it was God’s sermon to Saint Catherine in a vision when He preached the world’s shortest sermon in only four words, summarizing all of divine revelation in two two-syllable sentences: “I’m God; you’re not.” It’s amazing how easy it is to forget that last part.”

An excerpt from “How To Be Holy” by Peter Kreeft

“I’m God, you’re not. How many times I’ve caught myself acting like and believing that I think like God—or maybe even worse, that God thinks like me.

And not just me, I see people all the time, good people, God loving people, speaking for God, telling others what God does and doesn’t do—what He does and doesn’t want—closing their minds, ignoring wiser others because they have it all. I know whenever I do these things, I am not really aware of what I’m doing until I’ve already done it and even then it’s often hard to see. Of course we are expected to think more and more like Christ the closer we get to Him—the more Holy we become—but to really think we know Him well enough to speak for Him. I don’t know about yours, but my Bible has 1,394 pages. My Catechism of the Catholic Church has 902 pages. If we knew everything about God contained in all those pages, would we have even scratched the surface of who He is and what and how He thinks and what His purpose for eternity is? I’m God; you’re not—how easy that is to forget.

What if we added the knowledge of all the other books ever written about him by theologians, the Doctors of the Church, other Saints, Popes, priests, non-Catholic ministers and theologians and laypeople? And while we’re at it, throw in all the homilies and talks ever given. Would we then really know God? Would we know His mind? Could we then be confident in speaking for Him? Would we then know how He thinks and acts?

When we see something really horrible happen don’t we think that particular evil should not have happened? You’re right, evil should not exist. But yet it does. If I was God I would not have let it happen and so I think that God should not have let it happen—that it couldn’t be from God. But yet again we hear Him say—I’m God; you’re not. God speaks to us just as He did to Job—“I didn’t notice you standing there when I was creating the universe”.

Evil exists. And God knew that it would from the beginning and yet He still allowed us to have free will. We no doubt would have done things differently.

All sorts of bad things happen to us and others for no apparent good reason. We have a hard time believing that a spouse or child suffering and dying of cancer could be the will of a loving and all powerful God. Could such extreme tortures really be necessary for us—for our good?

If it were possible for God to make us Holy and wise by giving us an easier lesson, better gifts, more graces, wouldn’t He just do it?

Jesus assured us that not a single hair falls from our head and not a single sparrow falls from the sky, without the will of the Heavenly Father. Every single thing that happens in your life is directly and deliberately designed by God for one end, to bring you to perfection, to make you Holy, to get you and me to Heaven.

As human beings, we don’t do well with mysteries. We’re only comfortable when we believe we have all the answers, when we have defined it, put limits on it and placed it neatly into a little box. That’s why it’s so tempting to believe we know what God does and does not do. We have this compelling need to believe we have a firm grasp of who He is and what and how He thinks and what He will and won’t do to get us to everlasting life. We have an impossible time imagining limitlessness. Do we honestly believe that even after we get to heaven we will then truly know God? Do we believe that even after a million years we will have scratched His surface?

The purpose in eternal life as far as we know it is to be one in Christ. Maybe for that to happen, it takes an eternity.

Maybe the next time we find ourselves believing we know God, we’ll hear Him whispering in our ear “I’m God; you’re not”.