UNFAIR!
It looked like a certainty. Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints were going back to the Super Bowl. But there was no call. Had there been an interference call, New Orleans would have had the ball on the 5 yard line with a new set of downs to run out the clock before kicking the field goal. This was clearly unfair. The Saints should have been in the Super Bowl. UNFAIR!So now what do you do if you are Sean Payton, Drew Brees, Tommylee Lewis, or our Momentum speaker, John McCann?You know what it's like. Some of you stood at an altar with absolute commitment. But you had been misled. And the other person saying their vows wasn’t real with you. You were betrayed and cheated on. UNFAIR!You’ve taken care of your health. You eat right. You don’t smoke, drink excessively, or use drugs. You get plenty of sleep. But you’ve just been diagnosed with something that you can’t see your way through right now. UNFAIR!You’ve budgeted carefully, scrimped and made sacrifices. You’ve worked like a dog and gone without. But still, your paycheck ran out yesterday and you’ve got another week before the next one. UNFAIR!All the while you see undeserving people around you, blessed with good marriages, healthy bodies, and lots of money. How is that fair?And you know the answer, right? Life isn’t fair. It’s not. Even while we see others blessed more than us, if we look more perceptively, we’d see the many people around us who would love to trade places with us, people in deep poverty around the world, people with worse health conditions or major disabilities. It’s not fair for us or for those around us.I think the Saints players and fans had good reason to be upset. You maybe do, as well. But at some point, we’ve all got to get back up and keep going, recognizing that there will be more bad calls in the future, more injustice, more inequity. We live in a sinful world and our ultimate liberation will come when Jesus returns or we return to him. Not before. But in the meantime, while God wants us to play fair ourselves, and go to bat for the underprivileged; he wants to use the inequities and difficulties that we are up against for his kingdom expansion, his glory, and our ultimate good. Which means we have to respond to these things in ways that point to and honor him, while trusting that he will take care of everything according to his plan and in his time.“I want you to know, brothers, [the unfair imprisonment] that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel” (Philippians 1:12).