God does not play favorites and yet it surely does seem that way, doesn’t it? Personally, I know I am abundantly blessed, especially when I compare my gifts to those of so many people I know and the millions I do not know. Their gifts, or I should say, seemingly lack of them, pale in comparison to my abundant gifts. I am very blessed. But that certainly unanswered question is: “Why me and not them?”
I believe God loves each and every one of us to the same degree, namely, totally. But if measured by gifts given, it certainly does not seem that way: not in any way and not in the least. And yet, doesn’t that seem the way we measure God’s love for us: by the gifts given, the prayers answered, the blessings received – or not? That is how we often measure love in this life anyway, is it not?
The truth is that no one of us knows the mind of God let alone even begins to understand it. We don’t even understand God: how God is God or simply how God is. When I try to, I quickly change the subject. God is completely beyond my comprehension. All I can do is believe and trust that God knows what is best for me even if I, at times, at many times, think otherwise.
So what does God ask of me, ask of each one of us who believe but do not understand or even begin to comprehend? The simple answer, but not the easy one, is to do the best we can with the gifts we have been given, no matter how many or how few. It is useless to ask why we are blessed (or unblessed as the case may be) because we will never know the answer, not in this life anyway.
But it is not useless and, in fact vital, that we ask about our response to our blessings an un-blessings, if you will, as vast or as limited they may be. On the one hand, while we certainly do not like the bad that happens to us for whatever reason it happens, we can certainly ask why we have failed to use our gifts as we could and should have. On the other, while we may and often do place God on the hook for the bad that happens, we are left on the hook for the bad we have caused because we failed to do our best or maybe even failed to do anything.
None of this, of course, answers the question as to why bad things happen to people who do not deserve what happened to have happened. Is it God’s will that the baby dies, the cancer kills, the accident happens? I don’t believe it is. What I do believe is that God does not abandon us but gives us all the grace and strength we need to make resurrection and new life from it. That will never be easy and it certainly does not answer our question about why the bad happened.
What we have all discovered, and hopefully learned, is that is sometimes the greatest gift, the greatest blessing of all, is finding and living that new life in whatever form it takes.
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