At the risk of being misunderstood or seeming callous toward the troubles and heartaches which we all experience, we want to affirm that any day with Jesus is a good day. You may wish to protest that thought as you reflect upon the days in your life in which something happened that nearly crushed the life out of your soul. How could that be a good day? Let’s look at a real life example.
Consider Paul and Silas in the prison at Philippi (Acts 16:16-34). Paul had done a good thing by casting an evil spirit of divination out of a slave girl, but they ended up being beaten with rods and thrown into prison because of it. Was that a bad day? Well, yes, but what do we find them doing? “...praying and singing hymns of praise to God...” As a result of all of this (throw in an earthquake from God), the jailer and his family were all baptized into Christ! Beyond that, Paul and Silas got out of prison. Sounds like a good day
Paul’s focus was ever on the spiritual side of things and the love which his Savior had for him. This isn’t to say that the persecutions he endured for his Lord didn’t hurt or cause him difficulties. He just constantly reminded himself of the love which Christ had for him. In his stirring words found in our text, Paul enumerates a host of bad days - tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. In addition to these, he speaks of death, principalities, things present, things to come (unknown to us), powers, “nor any other created thing.” His point? That even if we experience any or all of these things, it is no indication that Christ has stopped loving us nor that such things have the power to somehow separate us from the great love of our Savior.
Paul sees it this way. Quoting from Psalm 44:22, he admits that we are “being put to death all day long” and considered “as sheep to be slaughtered.” Sounds like a long, bad day. Yet, Paul proclaims that “in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.” Sounds like a good day, a very good day.
><> Jeff