You Have Been Good -- Twila Paris

 

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.” Then the very One who dismissed the compliment from a rich man told him that, besides keeping the commandments, he needed to part with his money (Mark 10:18-22; Luke 18:19-23). Oh, that one smarts, Jesus! Perhaps Twila Paris would have been caught off guard as much as the rest of us, when Jesus said these words. First, He says something puzzling, and then He issues a really challenging footnote for us followers. Nevertheless, you could imagine that Twila understood what Jesus was saying, when she declared that “You Have Been Good”, and that probably she would be as confident as the rest of us in picking out the Good versus the Evil in this 19^th Century work of art (The Temptation of Christ, by Ary Scheffer). In this artwork, Jesus is just beginning His earthly ministry when He confronted Satan (Matthew 4); Twila reminds us that all He accomplished after this wilderness clash with the enemy is why we now can say ‘Good’ when we call out to Him.

 

Twila Paris had been singing and worshipping the Good One for over 20 years when she penned ‘You Have Been Good’ around 1988. She was truly ‘Little Twila Paris’ when she’d first started singing as a youngster, all of seven years old, and so by the time she was 30, the faith with which she’d been raised was deep within her. You could guess that she thought this faith was worth spreading, for this song she wrote is part of the 1988 album named For Every Heart. What was motivating Twila in 1988, after she had already cut six albums, including five as an adult in the early to mid-1980s? Today, she’s written so many songs and produced so many albums, that maybe even Twila might not be able, with pinpoint accuracy, to remember what brought about her personal address to this Good God. But, the crucial part of this episode in the late 1980s was that she enumerated a number of good things in His relationship to us. Indeed ‘all generations’ can applaud His faithful goodness. His ’steadfast love and tender mercy’ are at the root of the ‘salvation’ He has purchased for each of us. Being ‘fed’ by Him and led by His ‘Spirit’ are the ways He continues to care for those He has called. And finally, Twila zeroes in on this God’s character, that this ‘Almighty’ is ‘unchanging’, ‘upright’, and ‘holy’. What could be better and more reassuring than following someone you’ve identified as perfect, and knowing that He’s not going to become anything else but the good that you’ve already learned to appreciate and trust? And so, Twila wasn’t really trying to offer a lot of deep theological rationale for sticking with Him. She just wanted to tell of her own feelings for Him after two-plus decades within His shadow.

 

It’s like a love song that Twila was singing to Him, when she offered up ‘You Have Been Good’.  A couple in love, when they make their vows at a wedding, really are saying that they want to grow old together when they promise to forsake others, and ‘till death do us part’. Have you ever wondered what would either party say during those nuptials if they could actually see each other’s visage 40-50 years hence? Wrinkles, extra weight, receding hairlines, bodies potentially weakened by disease – not a pretty physical picture, is it? Consider that our groom (spiritually speaking – Revelation 18 – 22) will not change, and that He’s looking at us (His bride) with a different set of glasses than you and I might use. Kinda seems like Twila was still, in her mind, standing at the altar with Him in 1988. Actually, let’s never leave that place and time!       

 

 

See here for information on the composer/author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twila_Paris

 

Read about the author here: Welcome To TwilaParis.com (archive.org)

 

You can find the reproduction of The Temptation of Christ here (source of picture -- Good and evil - Wikipedia)