Life is not fair!
I apologize for stating the obvious. But then again, do we sometimes hope that it will be? I don’t. We don’t usually notice how unfair life is when we get goodies we didn’t earn or manage to escape the consequences of our mistakes.
I had one such an event recently. I was asked a couple of weeks before a state-wide youth conference/dance festival to write an article for the Church News covering the event. I eagerly agreed. Though I had a son that would be attending it, the only thing I had done in preparation was to take my son shopping for needed costume items.Someone had sewn 300 poodle skirts and 300 prairie skirts and rehearsed and transported kids for a million hours. . .but it wasn’t me.
The day of the performance, I showed up and was given an “all access” pass. The pass was on a spring load, so I could pull it up for display and it would automatically retract. The 60 mile drive to the youth conference location was worth that pass, but it got EVEN BETTER. My spring loaded pass gave me access to talk to anyone I wanted, to go anywhere I wanted and an hour long interview with the visiting Church dignitary, Sister Ann Dibb of the Young Women’s general presidency and Church President Thomas M. Monson’s daughter. (She’s a neat lady, the type you wouldn’t mind if she stopped in to borrow something at 2:00p.m. and you were still in your p.js because you had a great book to read.)(And maybe even vice versa)
I gave her copies of each of my books, which she didn’t promise to read.
The show was really fun and entertaining and the story not too hard to write. I sent the story to The Church News an hour or two before the Monday afternoon deadline and received a note back the next day saying that they were so impressed by the story and photographs (taken by Jay Spear) that they wanted to use it for a center spread feature. Since they have the center feature for this week, it will come out on the 23rd of July. They HOPED I wouldn’t be disappointed in the delay. I wrote back that since they put it so nicely, I’d try not to be offended.
No life isn’t fair. I did nothing and hogged two fistfuls of perks. Others worked for hundreds of hours and their names are not only not mentioned, they are not even known to most of the participants and planners.
A few days later, I learned that one of my kids had been swindled out of $2,000. He was trying to help someone. He was duped, gullible and way, way, way too trusting. As he told me the story, I could hardly believe that anyone would fall for the scam, and I felt sick. He’s a smart kid! How does this happen? But as I thought about it, it seemed to me that I would 2000 times rather have a gullible son who tries to help every one he can, than a slick polished thief who got money dishonestly. No make that 10,000. NO MAKE IT A GOOGLEPLEX! How blessed I am to be the mother of the swindled and not the swindler!
But it does point out that life isn’t fair. The swindler’s mother probably didn’t have a tenth the advantages in raising her child that I did. Is it “fair” that I have a son to be proud of and she has a thief?
And I suppose that I’ve been the one in the kitchen or laundry room that nobody notices or cares about lots of times. Maybe the Lord only gives us glory when we can stand it a little bit without it consuming our thoughts with pride. (I hope I can stand it!)
(But just between you and me, it IS fun to have the two fistfuls every once in a while!)
If our world was perfectly fair, the law of justice would keep us from our Heavenly Father forever. I hope it will never be fair because I need Jesus Christ to bear MY sins and weaknesses and mistakes. He was perfect and didn’t deserve anything but a perfect life. He got the opposite. So I’m grateful for the mercy of Jesus Christ that allows ‘justice’ to be subdued through repentance. I suppose I’m infinitely glad that life is not fair.
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