Life isn’t fair. It was never intended to be. God created an enormous variety of creatures. They have different skills and strengths and habitats. A world with this kind of diversity can’t be fair. For it to be fair every creature would have to be exactly the same. Creation is good though. God created it perfectly, in fact. He intended every creature to have a job, be happy and good at its its job, be rewarded by that job, and be joyful in its place in the world. The dung beetle doesn’t long to eat the leaves at the top of the trees like the giraffe. He’s happy to roll the giraffe’s dung home instead. To the giraffe maybe it doesn’t seem “fair” to have great views and fresh air when the dung beetle toils in the mud? But to the dung beetle, it might not seem fair to enjoy the cool shade of the moist grass while the giraffe must sweat and strain in the hot sun. This “unfairness” is good. The dung beetle and the giraffe have exactly the tools they need to do exactly what they do which provides a crucial service in fertilizing and aerating the soil. It’s a perfect system. Or it was. Until sin entered the picture. All manner of brokenness came with it: disease, envy, selfishness, resource scarcity, greed, poverty, etc. It also distorted the inequities in God’s creation. The natural “unfairness” became imbalanced by greed and selfishness. Instead of sharing resources, people started to hoard and steal. People were, and still are, divided into those with power and those without. The haves and the have-nots. This new kind of unfairness is not good and not what God intended. Today’s verse is talking about one of the inequities of life and what Jesus’s followers should do about it: help the weak. The haves (even if I have just a little) should help the have-nots. If God gave me a marketable skill, I should work hard at it. The money I earn should be used to help those who have less than I do. But the haves may think this is unfair. They whine, “I should be able to enjoy my earnings myself and do what I want! Those have-nots should get a job or work harder or stop being so lazy or foreign or disabled or… weak.” So many sick judgments and excuses. Meanwhile the have-nots may be thinking that it’s not fair that the haves got to go to school while they had to stay home and care for their siblings because their mom was hospitalized or that they were born with a heart defect or any of a million brokenness issues. None of this unfairness is good. And complaining about unfairness isn’t going to change anything. Until Jesus comes and remakes creation perfect again, my job is to use everything God has blessed me with to help tilt the balance toward “good unfairness” again by blessing others. Without whining about life not being fair!
Dear God,
Thank you for your perfect and beautiful creation. I long to see it the way you originally intended it to be. In the meantime, teach me to stop caring about what is fair or not fair and to just obey you. Thank you for all you have given me. Show me how and where to be a generous giver today.
CamDevo 