THAT'S NOT FAIR!!!!

That was the lament coming from the living room a couple weeks back, as my 11 year old son was taking on a new part of a familiar video game. He was stoked that he finally discovered how to unlock this portion of the game, but not as excited in finding out how hard it was. He obviously had made this same kind of complaint elsewhere, because I couldn't even open my mouth to encourage him before he blurted out; "I know, life's not fair..."

He's right. Life can be quite unfair, not always granting us the smooth sailing we desire to get from one stage of life to the next...even one day to the next. We've all had times where God allows things into our lives that WE don't think are "fair." But what's fair? Who is to decide what is fair? As a 12 year old boy at church says; "Fair is a place where you ride rides." He's right, too.

For most of society, and even spilling over into the Christian world, fair isn't based on a standard of right and wrong, nor is it interested in justice for all, but is firmly rooted in what I want and what I think ought to happen, so I can be happy. But if we're just gut level honest, fairness is the smoke screen to hide our selfishness, that we want what we want when we want it. The world pushes that all over us. "Obey your thirst;" "Have it your way;" "You deserve a break today;" even one of our local banks; "It's all about you!!" Life and everyone in it owes it to us that our lives be nice and cushy and that we have what we think we ought to have with a minimal amount of resistance.

God's viewpoint is completely different. Thanks to Adam and Eve, we come into this world an offense to God. We deserve death, we deserve separation from God, we deserve the Hell prepared for the devil and his angels. Our spiritual x-ray is not pretty, as seen in Romans 3. Ah, but again, the life's not fair goes both ways. Jesus took a horrible beating and crucifixion from the hands of men...punishment that HE didn't deserve, so that mankind's sin debt could be wiped out with a childlike trust in Him. There is a recent song from the Christian group called Reliant K that says that "the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair." That line really grabbed hold of me. We don't deserve to have any shot of getting to know God in a personal way. We have no merits in and of ourselves that would make the Creator of the universe want to hang with us. But yet, out of His great heart of love, he extends both His mercy and His grace. Mercy is NOT getting the punishment you DO deserve and grace is GETTING the good stuff that you don't deserve. God offers both in exchange of our pledge of faith to accept what Jesus did for us as the finished work to save us from our sins. That pledge makes us a part of God's family and cancels out the penalty we deserve for the sins of our past. It secures a place in heaven with Him for all of eternity, a place that God is working on currently for me to inhabit. Compared to what Jesus went through for me, all my troubles are piddly. As the Apostle Paul put it in perspective "the sufferings of this life aren't worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed to us."

Is life not fair? Absolutely...but I wouldn't have it any other way.