The world is full of...

Finish this sentence: 

The world is full of _________________.

evil?

suffering?

trouble?

darkness?

 

I don't know how you would fill in the blank, but these are some of the first answers that come to my mind.

 

But I learned something last night:

 

"The world is full of his (God's) loving-kindness."

That's straight from the Bible, folks (Ps 33:5b), one of the most brutally honest books I've ever read.  It doesn't sugar coat.  This is the book that says things like: "all our righteous acts are like filthy rags" (Is 64:6) and "In this world you will have trouble" (Jn 16:33).

Today, I choose to BELIEVE and to SEE that the world is full of God's loving-kindness.  I choose to look for loving-kindness instead of sorrow and hardship and evil; those things are easy enough for me to spot.  Here's where I saw His loving-kindness to me today:

• an answered prayer for uninterrupted sleep (no kitty scratching at the bedroom door, no middle-of-the-night cries for water, or tuck-ins, or a lost stuffed animal)
• an early wake-up from God with time to pray and read (a novel!) and doze all before getting out of bed
• this sentence from my son (it just kept going and going): "I think I saw an orange banana outside last night when I went for a walk with Daddy.  (pause)  It was squished."
• a request for peas as the topping on a boy's english muffin pizza... and he ate it!  This made me smile so much!
• the knowledge that people are praying for us, and a very real experience of God's gracious answers to those prayers: joy, peace, contentment, freedom from fear and loneliness.

This is how the Psalm ends:

May your unfailing love rest upon us, 

O Lord,

even as we put our hope in you.

Ps 33:22