When Life Isn’t Fair

When Life Isn’t Fair

Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in you. Psalm 25:5

My Kentucky grandmother, Mama Farley, used to say, “Honey, there are some things in life that all you can do with them is bear them. And you bear them best by hanging on to the Lord.”

Of course, I didn’t want to bear my problems. I wanted them fixed now and in my way. That was before life taught me the truth of Mama Farley’s statement and before I met Elizabeth Smith, one of Mama’s neighbors who attended the little church just down the road.

In our Kentucky community, the center of our social and religious life was that building perched on the bank of the Cumberland River. The little white clapboard structure had survived numerous floods, the Great Depression, and even the widening and paving of the road just outside its front door.

On Sunday mornings, the preacher would ring the bell shortly after nine thirty to let folks know he had arrived. Soon the community would gather, and we would exchange news from the past week. Sarah would ask about distant relatives or laugh appreciatively at the latest grandbaby story. Minnie often pulled a promised quilt pattern out of her apron pocket. And always Elizabeth Smith smiled as she leaned over her short cane. Even as a child, I towered above her. My aunt told me Elizabeth had been dropped by the “granny woman” who had attended her birth, and her little back had been twisted. No medical teams had been available to help her, and little Elizabeth, bent almost double, had leaned on a tiny cane, even in childhood.

The adult Elizabeth had every legitimate reason to complain about the tragedy that had altered her life forever, but I never heard her grumble. In fact, just before we entered the church each Sunday, she always smiled at whoever was standing nearby and said, “Isn’t Jesus sweet?”

Isn’t Jesus sweet? I stood dumbfounded at her words. Would I have said that if I’d been in her place? Or would I have pulled bitterness into my every sentence? Those were questions I didn’t want to ponder.

Elizabeth has long been in heaven, but her words remain in my mind and heart. And I love thinking of her standing straight as she finally looked into the face of her sweet Jesus. —SANDRA

Lord, I confess the words Isn’t Jesus sweet? are not the first ones out of my mouth when life seems more than I can bear. Help me to remember Elizabeth’s example. And remind me that you truly are sweet, even when life is sour.

Hope not only bears up the mind under sufferings but makes her rejoice in them.

—JOSEPH ADDISON (1672–1719), ENGLISH ESSAYIST, POET, AND DRAMATIST