Injustice

The law of sowing and reaping does not explain everything in this life. I know people who are reaping things they never sowed. That kind of suffering, the pain of not knowing why something happened, fills the heart with frustration and that awful sense that God has forgotten.

I call this injustice: the mismatch between what was sown and what is being reaped, or between what is deserved and what is received.

The good news is that God has an answer for it too. He is your advocate. Even when pain enters your life for no reason you can explain, as it did with Job, in the end He will raise a banner in your favor (Isaiah 59:19, NIV).

Job’s three friends ran through every theory and assumption they could think of, trying to pin down where Job’s fault must have been. But that was never the answer. It was injustice, and the only way through it was to wait.

In the middle of that waiting, it is normal to lose patience. It is normal to complain to God about His silence. It is normal to feel the pull to give up. But that is exactly where the voice of the Father breaks in, lifting you out of mourning and saying to you what He said to Jerusalem: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me” (Isaiah 49:15-16, NIV).

Sometimes this wait is not answered, resolved, or settled in this life, in this world. Sometimes injustice ends the very second we look into our Savior’s eyes for the first time.

This word is for you today: even though you have not finished reading the book of your life, He finished writing it long ago. And it is not just any ending. It goes like this:

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ He said to me: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children’” (Revelation 21:4-7, NIV).