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May 2008
21 May 2008
A Night on the Bayou Video
We had a great time on "the bayou" at our annual crawfish boil!
Check out the video by clicking here.
23 May 2008
That's Not Fair!
Not so long ago, I was at a local center where I help tutor elementary-aged children after school. On this particular day, I happened to have a few small, loose magnets in my pocket. After we finished the reading homework for the day, the two kids I had helped began to play a memory game, then grew bored and asked for something else. I pulled the magnets out, and they watched as the metal discs would move across the table toward each other, drawn by the invisible force. After a while, it was time for all the children to head home. I handed each of the two a few of the magnets, and having one extra, gave it to second little girl. “Now she has more than me!” yelled the first girl.
“She has one more,” I replied.
“Give me another one then!” she responded.
“I don’t have another one.”
“She didn’t do anything to get that extra one!”
“As best as I remember, neither of you did anything to get any of them. I just gave them to you.”
“I should get as many as her!”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not fair, you giving her one more than me!”
I looked at her; she crossed her arms and looked sourly at me, pouting. “You know what?” I asked. “You possibly could go home without any magnets at all. Remember, I didn’t have to give either of you any. ‘Fair’ would be for me to send you both home empty-handed, seeing as how you didn’t deserve any reward, but I gave you both a little gift that I happen to have here with me today.”
She didn’t see it that way, I suppose.
Do you ever think that way about God? I talked to someone earlier this week about God and His fairness. “I just don’t think God is being fair,” she said. Her problem with God arose from a simple, but common, misunderstanding: we don’t understand that we don’t really deserve anything. It’s easy to look at God and say, “God, why don’t you do this or that!?” All the while we operate under the assumption that God owes us a miracle, a life without pain, or in the very least, a detailed explanation of why He chose to do a particular thing. But the fact of the matter is I don’t deserve any good thing, not by my own merit. Truth be told, I don’t want what I deserve. Neither do you.
Paul addresses this very idea in writing to the church at Rome, “Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! For He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion” (Rom. 9:14-15). When someone owes us something, it can not be counted as a gift. And only when the person deserves something much, much worse than what is received can an act be called merciful. Getting what we deserve is fair; getting the gift of mercy is more than fair. Too often my response is like the little girl I tutored, “God, why can’t I have more!”
But I have to remember that I could be empty-handed…and that would be entirely fair.
DCG