The Good Things About Ugly Days

No one likes a bad day:
Have you had a no good, terrible, horrible day recently? Or maybe just one extremely painful blemish on an otherwise perfectly good day that somehow drained all the good out and left you feeling defeated and snowed under?


It didn't sound especially encouraging to me this morning when I read these words in Ecclesiastes, but the more I meditated on them, the more hope I managed to wring from them:


In the day of prosperity be joyful,
But in the day of adversity consider:
Surely God has appointed the one as 
well as the other...
Ecclesiastes 7:14

Difficult days certainly don't lend themselves to celebration, but they do give us reason to carefully consider what God may be up to. Oh, at the time we may be too swamped with the work and pain and frustration and regret of it all to really notice what God is doing. But it's always a good idea to at least look back and see if we can notice the hand of God intervening on our especially no good, horrible, bad day.

We may see that God used our terrible day to:
I take great comfort in knowing that God has purpose for everything He allows to come into my life.  He causes all things to work together for good in my life. That doesn't mean He makes everything turn out in a way that makes me jump up and down in glee. But it means He is constantly at work, on the good days and the bad, to make me more like Jesus, to refine me.


So the next time you experience one of those no good, horrible, terrible, very bad days, just remember that God is still up to some good in your life. He has appointed this day. This is the day (even if it feels like an especially ugly one at the time) that God has made for you, and you can rejoice and be glad in it!

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