The new job you were excited about becomes obsolete or has to let you go.
The pregnancy you considered your greatest joy becomes your greatest pain when the child is lost.
The relationship that was going so well unexpectedly ends.
Life seems to go like this: You finally experience something that makes you unbelievably happy, happier than you have ever been, but then all of a sudden that thing is lost. It might not have anything to do with you or something you did, it just gets taken away. That's not fair, is it?
The truth is, every loss in our life is fair, because the thing is, we don't deserve anything, not even life itself.
While a lot of things in life don't seem fair, the most unfair thing of all that we completely overlook is the undeserved grace of God.
Some of my favorite lyrics by Relient K are in the song "Be My Escape":
And this life sentence that I'm serving/I admit that I'm every bit deserving/But the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair
By nature, we deserve death, and not just death of the body but also of the soul: we deserve eternal separation from God. But God, in his rich mercy, decided to save us from our deserved fate.
Ephesians 2 sums it up well:
1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
This is what grace is: We deserve to die because we are sinful in nature, always wanting to gratify the desires of our flesh rather than desire the things of God. The punishment for sin is death. But, because God loves us, He sent His Son Jesus in our place to take the punishment that we deserve.
My pastor at Redeemer reminds us of this every week and puts it this way: When we stand before God someday, God will not see us in all of our sin; He will look at us and see His Son. He will welcome us in as His children, for in Christ our debt has been paid.
I need to be reminded of this constantly, because it really puts my suffering into perspective. This should not dismiss our suffering, for I believe we have a right to properly mourn our losses and our disappointments. But, no matter how unfair life seems, we must remember what is most unfair: That Jesus, who is perfect and didn't have to die, took our place so that we could be redeemed and spend eternity with him. That is the beauty of grace; that is what makes life so wondrously unfair.
Well put. This so reminds me of Job and all that he went through. But in the end he learned that God is God and we are not. And we are quite blessed for even the littlest things He gives us.
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