The world is not particularly fair. As someone said to me yesterday, “If you’d told me Shreveport, Monroe, Lake Charles, Lafayette, Baton Rouge, and the Northshore would experience terrible flooding in one year, I’d laugh.” Some cities have all the luck. They grow and grow and are the envy of the country. Others rust away – or seemingly are washed away.
Same with people. Some can eat and eat and never gain weight. Some are born with amazing talent. Whatever they do seems to turn to gold. They can take $100 and turn it into $10,000 overnight. Others take $10,000 and lose it overnight. Some are born with physical limitations so severe they can hardly lift a fork. Others can throw a fastball 95 m.p.h. Some are born in Haiti, others Switzerland. Some have photographic memories. Others have trouble remembering their own name. The world is not fair.
However, successful people do not dwell on that fact. Successful people do not dwell on their troubles. Successful people are convinced troubles can be overcome.
I love football. If I spent the same amount of time studying that I spend on football, I could speak three languages and have memorized The Iliad. Instead, I look and sound like an armchair quarterback with a head filled with useless statistics.
The point of this football interlude is this: when my team gets behind, I tend to give up. I notice, however, that successful teams continue to believe they are going to win even when things aren’t going their way.
Life is something like football. When people find themselves in an awful situation or get the bad breaks of the game, I notice that some people move ahead, certain it will work out. Where does this come from?
For me, that source is God. It is the confidence that God can be trusted. It is the confidence that salvation is secure, no matter how threatening the current circumstances. That is what our faith is about, the assurance that somehow in the end, justice will be done, that things will work out, in the end God will prevail. If we continue to move forward in faith, our ultimate destiny is secure.
The other options, for example, blaming others, eating yourself up with anger, trying to find a short cut, making your own rules, waiting for the lottery or your Fairy Godmother to save you in the long run, just don’t work. Faith in God does.
“Somehow all things can work for good for those who love God.” Of course, we have to do our part and live in faith. The people of Louisiana will get through this one, too.