"Grown-ups are unfair!" my nine-year-old cried. I wouldn't let him stay up
past his bedtime to listen in on a meeting. Never mind that staying up for the meeting
would necessitate propping open his eyelids with Lincoln Logs. He reasoned that if it was
something forbidden to him, it had to be "radical."
It didn't matter what the meeting was about. If I had forced him to join the adult
discussion, he would have sat like a perpetually moving pretzel and begged, "Please,
Mommy, let me go to bed!"
"No, honey, you must stay and listen to this adult conversations I'd say.
"Grown-ups are unfair," he'd say.
And he's right, of course. From his perspective, peering at me through his little boy
world, I was being unfair. Fair would be letting him make all his decisions, unless, of
course, he was in a mood to vacillate.
Fair would be ignoring the consequences or his immature ability to sort through the
choices. Fair would be letting him eat cake for dinner or keep frogs in his bed. But I,
with my extra two decades-plus of knowledge and understanding and experience, have an
entirely different perspective. I'm the mommy.
I know when little boys should go to bed and when they should eat broccoli. He should
realize, by now, that Mother always knows best, seeing as I've told him this for the last
nine years.
I understand what unfair really is. Unfair is putting your house on the market to move
to a nicer neighborhood and.asking God to help you sell it, then watching every house but
yours sell in just a few short weeks.
Unfair is having to wait and wait and wait for a job when you know God could snap His
Almighty Finger and bring the job to you.
Unfair is praying to meet the right friend or the right future spouse and spending
years alone.
Unfair is war and hunger and disease and pollution and earthquakes and job lay-offs.
"God is unfair!" we grown-ups often cry. But does He think so? Aren't we
peering at God's domain through our human world? Really, are we knowledgeable and
understanding and experienced enough to see things the way God sees them?
Do we really know what's unfair?
God's the Father. He knows what's best for us. You'd think we'd realize that by now,
seeing as He's proven it to us for the last several thousand years.
