"It's Not Fair!"

How many times throughout life have you made the statement "It's not fair!"  I know I have a time or two and would venture boldly to say you have too!  Well, it's just not fair.  I remember once (as a rebellious teenager in school) getting really upset with my English teacher over something she was doing.  First of all, she was a Home economics major, and by her grammar I wondered if she even took English in college.  She was what I would call a "good ole girl".  I am sure she was not a bad person, because if you remember...I said I was a rebellious teenager.  She did play favorites to some of the girls in the room.  Before class began each day, she would dialogue the girls about their relationships, fashions, and where they'd been taken on their dates.  Now this wasn't bad.  However, this would carry on long after the bell rang and class should have started.  Now I must say, I wasn't upset over the fact that class had not began and she was still in conversation with certain girls in the class.  What lit my fuse was that some of us guys would carry on our own conversations from other sections of the classroom.  While engaged in her conversations with the girls (after class should have started) she would pause just long enough to yell at us guys for talking during the class!  As I said, that lit my fuse and one particular day, the firecracker exploded.  I simply got up, said a little something something I would not repeat now, walked across the floor toward the door, walked out of the room, slammed the door as hard as I could, and got in my 1970 Plymouth Duster and went home!  I mean...after all...it wasn't fair, right!  I won't begin to comment on the repercussions that caused in my life for the next couple of days that somehow involved the High School principle and my parents.  But still...it just wasn't fair.

I have reiterated that incident over and over in my head since then (way back in 1973).  And every single time I do a "go-over" in my mind...I cannot find one reason for justifying what I did!  Especially since I began my relationship with God 5 years after that.  But still I know in my heart that the way the guys were treated (day after day) was not fair.

I have learned many times over, since that incident life sometimes is just not fair.  I have also learned that if we react in ways like I did, we simply make ourselves the judge.  I assumed a position that day that I was not qualified to hold...judge and jury.  By taking matters into my own hands I also sealed my own sentence.  (By the way I did graduate that year!)  Sometimes life is not fair.  But there is One who is the judge who makes things right in His time, and by His ways.  Sometimes it is a challenge to trust God in situations that are not fair to us, because we want to correct the situation with human abilities and means.  But trusting God during the challenge frees Him to move in our behalf, in His time, and by His means.  He is for us!


The truth is God's grace is not fair.  It is wonderful.  It is life-changing.  It is incredible!  But it's really not fair.  Based on my life prior to knowing Christ...I didn't deserve His grace, and still don't.  It's so easy for us to judge others and sentence them to our opinion of justice.  It's so easy for us to judge ourselves and pronounce a guilty sentence based on our inability to please God ourselves.  The sooner we understand God's mercy we will understand God's grace.  We don't deserve either...however God chose to deal with our sins and its guilt His way.  No...it's not fair...but it's God's way, and He is the judge.  Thank God...it's not fair!