WINSDAY WISDOM
This is not intended as entertainment. This is preaching for the soul when life feels unfair.
Have you ever wondered what if things were different in your life? Do you ever feel as if life is unfair?
Sure, you have. It might have resulted from the loss of a loved one, a health diagnosis, financial setbacks, emotional stress, a messed-up relationship.
I imagine fairness is somewhat a matter of perspective.
Perspective: a person’s point of view.
Illustration: How would you feel if your neighbor received news of winning the HGTV $2 million home sweepstakes on the same day you are served with a $3,000 IRS bill? Life is unfair?
What if the next day included the correction that the two notices were delivered to the wrong addresses? You are the grand prize winner. Would you feel as if life were unfair? Perspective.
In the Old Testament Book of Job, God calls our attention to the hippopotamus.
Does the hippopotamus ever feel as if life is unfair? Only when he looks at the other cute and happy animals on social media.
The hippo looks short and heavy standing next to a giraffe. It appears gray and bland in a picture with a colorful tiger. Its bulging eyes are no match for the eagle’s and its home in the muddy swamp will never be featured in Southern Living.
More appropriately to this writing, you would feel very healthy, wealthy, and happy…if there were no one else around for comparison.
Social media posts the physical beauty, big promotion, and dream vacation of your friends or acquaintances. All of a sudden, life seems unfair. You feel as if you deserve those things or better. Afterall, you are a good person.
God used the hippopotamus as an object lesson for the lamenting Job, questioning the fairness of the recently tragic losses in his life.
Just a quick refresher of Job’s story. He trusted God. God blessed him greatly. In the heavenly world, God praised the faith of Job. The great adversary, Satan, challenged the validity of Job’s faith as well as the genuineness of God’s goodness.
Satan declared that Job only pretended to trust God because of its benefits. He also accused God’s pretense of goodness was just a bribe to get people to worship Him.
God allowed those fallacies to be challenged.
SPOILER ALERT: Job’s life ends up as a masterpiece lesson of God’s inherent and limitless goodness.
At one time, Job appeared to be sitting on top of the world. He had everything anyone would desire. I imagine other people thought it to be unfair for Job to appear to be so much better off in life than they were. Then came the time that no one wanted to trade places with Job.
Unaware of events going on in heaven, Job’s earthly life fell apart. He lost everything in one day. His family. His possessions. His health. His reputation.
Surely, he wished things had turned out differently. This was not how he expected God to rule his life. He doubted himself and questioned God as his life went from sitting on top of the world to sitting on a big stinky pile of poop.
Is everything God does always right, wise, good? Was Job’s faith real? Is yours?
The #1 Textbook is clear that all these things about Job and others and even the hippopotamus were recorded to give us instruction for endurance and encouragement to hope in God’s goodness (Romans 15:4).
So, let us seek to learn something from God’s conversation with Job.
God knows Job is thinking God messed up his life. Life suddenly felt very unfair.
God asks Job several hypothetical questions which could easily be directed to each one of us wanting to be God for a day.
“If you ruled the world, what would you tell God to do?”
What if you changed places with God? How different would your life become? What would you change if you were God for a day? (Job 40:2)
It is understandable that you like Job, might have some questions of God. We want the Almighty to answer our questions about the apparent injustice and unfairness of human suffering, such as, “Why do good people suffer more than bad people?“
More to the point of interest, “Why am I suffering?”
Assuming you are still wrestling with the unfairness of life, God has some more questions for you. Instead of answering Job’s questions, God showed up with His own list of seventy-seven questions for Job. I will limit our reflection to a few.
God’s first question was, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of this world?” (Job 38:4)
Job was speechless. Do I see you raising your hand with an answer?
God continued to emphasize subjects far beyond our understanding. “How were the dimensions of this earth determined? Who surveyed its vastness? What supports its foundations and who laid its cornerstone? Were you around to hear the morning stars singing and all the angels shouting for joy?” (Job 38:5-7)
Well, that should shut us up! Job did not have a response, but in case he and you might still be thinking about the unfairness of your suffering, God continued the interrogation of the complainant.
Please do not rush through these divine questions presented for our consideration regarding the wisdom of God’s goodness to us.
God asked about the astronomy of the cosmos and stars. God added other questions regarding meteorology, oceanography, and the animal kingdom (Job 38-39).
God asked if Job ever commanded the sun to rise in the morning. Can you turn this world’s darkness into light and light into darkness? Do you control where lightning strikes or the tides stop? Do the winds, rain, storms, snow, and hail appear in the amount and at the place and time you determine?
How do you hold the solar system together while other galaxies are spreading apart? How did you make animals out of dust and how do you provide food for all of them, including the birds which fly around with no feeding grounds? How do you share wisdom with others who have no interest in how you rule the world?
So, you think life is unjust and unfair for you? Have you figured out the miracle of birth for humans and animals? Would you create the people God does? If not, how do you judge and explain that to them? Would you create the rhinoceros, or make the ostrich stupid enough to forget her young while strong enough to defend them from outside threats?
Did you make the horse with the strength, speed, fearlessness, and courage to charge into harm’s way during the heat of the battle? What about the eagle with the strength to soar into the highest places while having the keen eyesight to see food for its young in the lowest parts of the earth?
Those questions lead into the highlight of the hippopotamus. Do you think the hippo looks at the rest of God’s created things and considers the Creator to be unfair?
Since God knows you cannot control the tides or the weather or the cosmos, He suggests you move down into the lightweight division and rule the animal kingdom. God suggests you command the hippopotamus to move to a new location.
When the hippo refuses to cooperate, just grab it by the nostrils and pull it where you want it to go. Watch out for the sharp teeth! When that does not work, God suggests you use your one and only arm left to slap the hippo in the face and force him to move.
Apparently, God also uses sarcasm to emphasize his point. (I believe that might be one of my few spiritual traits.)
Then God points out that the lumbering load of lard with the bulging eyeballs is not an animal to pity. God declares, “The hippopotamus is one of the crowns of my creation. It is my pet.”
That is right. God designed and planned the hippo as a good thing. The hippo is God’s pet. It knows and loves its Owner.
Is life unfair? You and Job are not pets. Job was chosen by God for a planned life of abundant and unending goodness…before the foundation of the world. So were you (Ephesians 1:4).
You have been God-designed and God-planned to be God’s child, the recipient of immeasurable and limitless goodness. It will take all the coming endless ages of time for God to show you the greatness of His goodness to you (Ephesians 2:7).
The late theologian, Vernon McGee remarked, “If you want to rule the world, you need to get your own universe. God rules this one.”
God is the sole source and standard of goodness. Everything God does is perfectly wise, right, and good. His sovereignty guarantees that no one and no circumstance can stop, hinder, or even lessen His goodness to you.
Life is not easy. We live in a world of selfishness, sin, pride, wickedness, and hate. We have the same cultural characteristics churning inside. There will be suffering and sadness and sorrow.
I admitted last time that I do not know all you have to wrestle with or worry about or how you have been wronged. I am unaware of how much you have been hurt or how deeply you might be plunged into despair. Life is never easy; it might even feel unfair. But your suffering does not match that of Job.
Be careful when you drown in thoughts about the unfairness of life. That is the danger zone. Adam and Eve were the only humans to live in a perfect place with perfect people. However, they began to think that God’s one limitation to their freedom seemed unfair.
It is a Satanic suggested lie that you would be happier and better off with a different life or different spouse or different family or different home or different workplace. “There is a way that seems right unto man, but the end thereof is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12).
A different path is not good for you. The end of that path is destruction.
THERE ARE NO “WHAT-IFS” WHEN IT COMES TO GOD’S PLAN.
There are no “what-ifs.” The all-knowing, all-powerful God of this world has already considered every possible alternative in your life and has ruled it out not to be in your best interest.
Your present circumstances might not be easy; they may be very difficult, and appear to be very, very unfair. There are no “what ifs” to dwell on. Do not ever give in to the lie that somehow you would be better off if things were different.
PERSPECTIVE: God has a better view of your life and future.
God has not shortchanged you when it comes to goodness. “There is not one good thing that God ever withholds from us” (Psalm 84:11). No good thing has been kept away from you. There are no “what ifs.”
When God created you, He gave life. When God saved you, He gave His Son. In creation, God made something out of nothing. In salvation, God made a beloved family member out of an enemy.
Without a word, God laid the foundation of the earth. With the blood of the living Word, God laid the foundation of your eternal security.
In creation, the Creator hung the earth on nothing as He listened to the songs of the angels. At your crowning, God hung His Son upon the cross and listened to the curses of proud and wicked men who wanted to rule their own lives. Then the angels filled the heavens with songs of praise and shouts of “Glory!”
Do you really think life is unfair?
God is the God of adversity just as He is the God of prosperity. God sees good when you do not. God intends good when others do not. God causes good when others cannot.
Our human nature desires the easy path where we do not have to exercise faith or practice fervent love or live with others where we have to give, give, and give some more.
I hope and pray we learn to trust when we do not understand. As Job declared, “Though God slays me, I will still hope in him” (Job 13:15). “I know that my Redeemer lives” (Job 19:25).
It is not important I understand the “Why” of my suffering? It is vital I learn to trust God.
After consideration of God’s questions and goodness, I do believe we can join Job’s declaration, “I have been talking and complaining about things I do not understand. God’s ways are far more wonderful than I ever imagined. I admit that I do not understand how ‘Life’ works. However, I now know God a little better; so, I will trust God more” (Job 42:2-5).
Change your perspective. Do not lower God down to your explanations about life. Raise your view of God.
THE GREATNESS OF GOD’S GOODNESS IS FAR HIGHER THAN YOU HAVE YET TO IMAGINE.
There is spiritual DNA inside you that knows God is faithful and His hope is real. Look to the heavens from where your help comes. Listen to God‘s Word. It will change your attitude regarding this earthly life.
BE THANKFUL YOU DO NOT RULE THE WORLD. BE THANKFUL YOU ARE NOT THE SOURCE NOR THE STANDARD OF GOODNESS.
BE THANKFUL FOR HOPE…EVEN WHEN LIFE FEELS UNFAIR.
“Oh, what a wonderful God we have! How great are his wisdom and knowledge and riches! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his methods! For who among us can know the mind of the Lord or knows enough to be his counselor and guide? Everything comes from God alone. Everything lives by his power, and everything is for his glory. To him be glory evermore” (Romans 11: 33-36).
Living, He loved me
Dying, He saved me
Buried, He carried
My sins for away;
Rising, He justified
Freely forever,
One day He’s coming
O Glorious Day! (O Glorious Day, Casting Crowns, hymn by Wilbur Chapman)
LOVE FIRST...LOVE MOST 