"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." -- James 1:17
Sometimes we forget this. We treat the good things that happen in life a little like the bad, perhaps sub-consciously thinking "I am so glad God allowed this to happen" as if all He did was step aside and let it happen on its own. But this verse says otherwise.
God is perfect. Every single thing God created is good because of that. After He created each and every aspect of creation, the verse concludes with "and God saw that it was good."
No evil can come from a purely good thing.
So if every single good thing comes from Him, every single good thing in your life is a special gift chosen by Him for you. Perhaps the words in His mind were something like "I will give him a close family," or "I will give her this beautiful house I know she will love." Even more specifically, "I know she will enjoy this sort of tea," and "I will make this rose flourish outside her window."
Every. Single. Good. Thing. Is. From. God.
And He takes pleasure in your pleasure.
"What a lovely thing a rose is! ...There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers." -- Sherlock Holmes, "The Naval Treaty"
