Does God Bless Some at the Expense of Others?

                                   

                                   Does God Bless Some at the Expense of Others?

My sister’s ceiling fell on her one night as she was sleeping.  Fortunately, it didn’t hit her and she was able to dive under the bed and wait for the dust to settle.  She lives in a house that was built in 1937 and it looks like they experimented with a new way to attach plaster to ceilings.  My boys and I went out to see her a couple of weeks ago to rip down the rest of the ceilings in the upstairs of the house and replace the plaster with sheetrock....with lots of glue and screws.   It turns out that her house has a Carriage house behind it where a couple is living temporarily while they get their life together.  Their house just burned down.

My life has been...well...let’s just say....not the way I would’ve planned it.  I took my family to Africa in 2010 and we returned in June of 2011 and I have not found another permanent job.  Suffice it to say, life has been difficult.

So, my sister needed help.  She’s going through a particularly difficult time and she desperately needs to sell her house, so ‘for such a time as this’ God has given me skills which could benefit her.  The couple that is living in her Carriage house have many skills including a great deal of compassion for my sister’s situation.  Is it possible that God has engineered our situations so that my sister would benefit?

It feels like a dangerous question to ask because it may upset our comfortable ideas of what a benevolent God looks like.  Surely, God doesn’t play favorites?  And don’t we have freedom of choice?  If God engineers or fixes situations, where is my choice?  The dangerous thing to do now is to sit around and philosophize about ‘what kind of god I believe in.’  A very popular practice in our culture today.

But what does the Bible say?  As a Christian, this is my authority on the nature of God.  I don’t believe that I have the privilege to make up what kind god I can believe in.  I have to accept God as He is, not as I want him to be.

My first thought goes to Genesis 3:15 where God essentially promises that He will rescue us from our sin through the incarnation of His Son.  He certainly chose Noah and his family over everyone else based upon his faith.  And then Abraham was chosen to be the father of the Israelite nation....a people formed out of one man (and Sarah)...chosen to represent God on this earth.  He chose Isaac over Ishmael.  He said, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated(Malachi 1:2,3).  David was chosen over all his brothers.  Esther was chosen to be queen through coincidence?  Go ahead, see if you can read the Bible and not see the God of the universe actively involved in the life of people.  Finally, I want to point out the passage in Romans 5:6 that says, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” 

So, I believe that it appears that for everyone’s benefit that God blesses some even when it seems to be at the expense of others.  It doesn’t seem fair does it?  Especially, if you are looking at  it from this culture’s perspective of demanding personal rights.

It actually helps me to view my situation this way.  If I can help my sister at this time in her life then praise God that I can be available.  Because I probably wouldn’t have considered it if I was gainfully employed.  And the couple in her Carriage house?  Did God burn or allow their house to burn down in order to be there for my sister?  Why not?  So, one final question: If God has blessed my sister or any other situation at my expense, can I be confident that God will eventually bring good even to me?

My testimony is that even in the midst of us blessing my sister, I did receive a blessing in that I got to spend 8 days of intense work, conversation and play with my boys.  My life situation is still pretty much as it was before I went to help my sister.   So, I sit and ponder these thoughts wondering how I will participate in the will of God tomorrow.  I pray that my attitude will be one of thankfulness no matter what happens since I can trust that God desires good things for me and you.And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.    Romans 8:28