If it were, my friend Clay - shown here in the hospital - would not have been chopped up and sent to heaven piece by piece. My friend Matt would not have lost his baby sister in a drowning accident when we were all in the third grade. My friend Beth would not have buried her young son a couple of years ago.
I would not have opened my email yesterday to find a prayer request for a 9 year old with an inoperable brain tumor.
My friend Kathy, who adopted a baby with spin-bifidia from the Ukraine, wouldn't be fighting cancer.
People wouldn't be starving or homeless.
The women I have grown to know and love through CWJC would have had parents who loved them and supported them like mine did me.
The rich wouldn't keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer.
I could go on and on.
I'm not a whiner by nature. I'm actually pretty optimistic. So just because cancer is growing in me right now, I'm not going to start whining. I just want to go on record saying life's not fair, and the sooner we all learn that, the better we will be able to cope with what comes at us.
If I live my life believing I deserve this or that - good because I've been good - then I'm going to be greatly disappointed when things don't work out the way I think they should.
So, why isn't life fair? I think it's because God's not fair. (Please keep reading!)
Jesus said God makes the sun to shine on the just and the unjust. And, He makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. (Someone else added the rain falls mostly on the just, because the unjust steals their umbrellas!) Therefore, we all get sunshine whether we deserve it or not, and we all get rain whether we deserve it or not.
I used to have problems with that verse because I wanted all sunshine. That was my idea of fair. But if that had happened, I would have been a spoiled, ungrateful brat!
Plants die without rain. Our souls need the rain to grow. And my greatest growth spurts have always occurred in the midst of the fiercest storms in my life.
The other reason I don't believe God is fair...His mercy and His grace! There have been plenty of times in my life that I should have been punished and He was merciful. He didn't give me what I know I deserved.
And, there have been lots of times in my life when I have been given great things that I didn't do anything to deserve. He showered me with sunshine through His grace.
I am blessed! I am redeemed! I've been adopted, and I am His child! I'm sealed with His Holy Spirit. As Paul said, if God doesn't do any thing else for me - He's already done so much more than I deserve.
I am so thankful for His mercy and His grace!
"I love you, O Lord, my strength." - Psalm 18:1
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