Although I would always prefer a seat, I am perfectly capable of standing. I might have sighed just a little though as the 8 young men close to us remained seated. Chivalry in not a common virtue here.
After a few minutes, a lady sitting on the bus engine got off the bus, and I sat down with the other three women sitting there. ( I couldn't find a good picture of a bus engine, but it is a box next to the driver. Actually I did, but the pictures of women hanging in the bus were not appropriate for this blog. It can function as a seat, and also a seat warmer. Great on a cold day, not so great in 90 degree weather.) As I was enjoying my relative comfort, an elderly woman struggled to climb up the steps of the bus. She paid her fare, and looked in vain for a seat. When she realized that all the seats were full, she reached for the rail, and remained standing.
I looked around, shocked, but not really, as all of the young men around us pretended they didn’t see her. Even though chivalry is not common, respect for the elderly generally is.
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| Translation: Woman: It seems like there are no gentlemen anymore. Man: There are gentlemen, the problem is a lack of seats.... |
I counted to ten, sure that one of the men around us would offer her a spot. I didn’t mind offering her mine, but it was on the bus engine, so it wasn’t ideal. Finally, when I realized that no offer was coming, I stood up and offered her my less than accommodating spot. (Not out of selfless-ness or joy, but out of frustration with the people around me.)
I wedged myself into a corner holding onto the rail, and Franco told me in English, “It isn’t fair.” I agreed. But then I started to think about my mom’s response to that complaint when I was younger.
“Life is not fair.”
It’s so true. And I think it is a lesson that we will probably never stop learning.
And for Christians, especially, I think fairness is a difficult thing to get our minds around.
We believe in, and serve a just God. A God that hates evil. A God that is good. A God that is gracious. A God that is merciful. And while all of those things are true, they can be hard to squeeze into our idea of a God that we can understand.
I have struggled with God’s fairness over the last few months. I have talked with women that had absolutely no prenatal care, and they have healthy babies. I have talked with women as they pour a mixture of cornstarch and water into their baby’s bottle, because they can’t afford milk. I have welcomed children into our home for lunch, because their mom left them without food for the day.
And in my pride, and desire for control, I don’t like that I did everything I knew how to do and my son still didn’t live. It doesn’t seem fair.
But then I think about Jesus. Jesus did everything right. He lived a perfect, sinless life, and was stilled killed. Brutally, and unfairly.
Because God is just, but He is also gracious and merciful.
And although I feel like my son's death is tragic, it really is not tragic that he was spared all of the pain of this world to be with Jesus. It is gracious and merciful.
This morning, I read a passage in Ephesians 3:14-19. It has always been one of my favorites, but this morning as I read, the Lord showed me something different.
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be STRENGTHENED with power through HIS Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts though faith-that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have STRENGTH to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with the fullness of God.”
Apart from being the longest run on sentence in the bible, the idea of being strengthened in order to know God’s love had never occurred to me before. The more I learn about God’s character and suffering, the more I am realizing that being strengthened by the Spirit is NECESSARY in order to even try to understand God’s love.
It is so wide, so long, so deep, so high, that of course it doesn’t make sense to me. It often doesn’t look fair. It doesn’t look like my idea of what love should be. It doesn’t in my life, or probably your life, and definitely didn’t as Christ suffered on the cross.
Because God is just, but He is also gracious and merciful.
God’s love surpasses knowledge. God’s love can’t be understood apart from the strengthening of the Spirit.
May our suffering and the strengthening of the Spirit allow us to be filled with the fullness of God.
Because God is just, but He is also gracious and merciful. Even when life is not fair.
