Life Notes: Life Isn’t Fair
by John Allen, Vice President

Recently, our minister preached an excellent sermon on how life isn’t fair. In turn, it sparked a thought in this old brain to sit down and write an article. During the past 30-something years I cannot count the number of times I have heard children and staff at Louisiana Methodist Children’s Home, as well as friends say that “life isn’t fair.” According to “Webster”, FAIR means: pleasant, pleasing to the eye, beautiful, handsome, not dark or swarthy, not stormy, open, frank, honest, not resorting to any trickery, etc. How many of us fit any of these characteristics all of the time? What about part of the time? See, life isn’t fair! I once had a woman tell me I was quite handsome and I got “big-headed” until I found out her vision was cloudy and she needed cataract surgery. See, life IS NOT FAIR!

Where is it written that life HAS to be fair? Did our parents tell us? Did we read it in a book? Do we think we are entitled to a fair life? Even in the Bible, story after story gives descriptions of life not being fair. Although my wife has never turned to salt, there have been times she wished I would.

Many of us get indignant when life isn’t fair – when we don’t get the job we wanted, a loved one is unexpectedly taken by death, we become ill, when our child becomes ill, a divorce takes place, etc. We tend to want to blame spouses, children, friends, bosses, co-workers, even God and ourselves, when life isn’t fair. It is so much easier to be able to blame others and feel sorry for our self than deal with the realism that this is all part of life. There will be good days and bad days; we will have real highs in life, and real lows. There will be days you don’t want to get out of bed and days you can’t wait to meet a new day.

It is very humbling to realize that we can’t control everything in our life. On those good days we feel blessed and thank God. On those bad ones, we realize life isn’t fair and ask for strength from God to make it through this time in our life and to remember that this too shall pass. (Read Psalms 138, verses 7-8).
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The Life Notes articles are written by staff of Louisiana Methodist Children’s Home and are published in The Ruston Daily Leader.