Life’s Not Fair — Morning Devotions

Subscribe to Morning Devotions podcast

A bit of homegrown advice, but I thought it was a good answer. Life is not always fair—I’m sure you know that already this morning. Life’s experiences have taught you this. Sometimes things work out in ways that are not better—they just are. As we grow up, however, we discover that life is not always fair.

We learn that people do not share equally. Perhaps our hearts were broken when someone we loved decided to leave us. Perhaps we lost money we had saved for years. Perhaps we were injured in an accident, or have had an extended illness. Perhaps someone deliberately harmed us or someone we love.

Sometimes children die. Sometimes we’re separated from the ones we love, with no happy ending ever. We have illnesses that go uncured. Bad people succeed, and good people suffer. Sometimes there is no silver lining. Bill Gates will be remembered for his speech at a high school when he told the kids 11 rules for life, and his number one point was: “Life is not fair—get used to it”.

It’s not a complaint—it’s reality. Think back to your time as a young child in school. Were you ever picked on or ridiculed by other kids? Were you teased because you were not good at sport? I certainly was.

Trust God—Even when Life is not Fair

One of the most helpful Christian books written on this subject was Robert Schuller’s Life’s not Fair but God is Good. He reminds his readers of the story from the Bible of two sons living with their father on a property. One day one of his sons came to their dad with an unusual request: “Can I have my inheritance early? If I wait until you’re gone I’ll probably be too old to enjoy it.” His father agrees and gives him the share of his inheritance, and off he goes to enjoy life. Life becomes one big party and he spends everything.

The other brother stays at home, working faithfully, doing his work, plus his brother’s work left behind. No doubt he was annoyed. But at the back of his mind he knew his father would repay him for his faithfulness and hard work. But what happened? The younger brother runs out of money, and is destitute and decides to come back home to his father. His father sees his young boy walking back and is overjoyed and throws a welcome home party. But the other brother is furious and feels cheated, and is very angry. What was the older brother’s attitude?: “It’s not fair”.

There’s a helpful verse in the Bible from Ecclesiastes 9:11 (ERV):

Hope 103.2 is proudly supported by

I also saw other things in this life that were not fair. The fastest runner does not always win the race; the strongest soldier does not always win the battle; wise people don’t always get the food; smart people don’t always get the wealth; educated people don’t always get the praise they deserve. When the time comes, bad things can happen to anyone!

And in the same book in the Bible we read: “So life came to mean nothing to me, because everything in it had brought me nothing but trouble. It had all been useless; I had been chasing the wind” (Ecclesiastes 2.17). One of the most helpful verses in the Bible is Romans 8:28: “We are confident that God is able to orchestrate everything to work toward something good and beautiful when we love Him and accept His invitation to live according to His plan.”

I’m not a fan of the water, but I understand scuba-diving instructors tell their students to ‘feel the bubbles’. When it’s pitch black and you have no idea which way to go, you reach up with your hand and feel the bubbles. Air bubbles always drift up to the surface.

When you can’t trust your feelings or judgement, you can always trust the bubbles to get you back to the top. When we aren’t sure, or you say to yourself, This isn’t fair, we can always trust God. God loves you and wants the best in every situation, even in the hard times.