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Life is unfair.  Bad things happen to good people.  How do we reconcile that with our understanding of a loving God?  

This week someone took a shot at former President Trump.  He survived the attack, and we are thankful for that.  However, another man was hit and killed by the gunfire.  By all accounts he was a good man who served his community and family and even his church.  How do we wrap our minds around this?  Is God a random God?  Is this all a predetermined spinning ball and there is no real intervention?

The answer is a resounding no!  This is hard to deal with and difficult to understand, but instead of blaming God or doubting God, we need to understand just how broken our world really is.  Since the beginning of time, we have messed up the gift and gifts that God has lovingly provided.  He continues to offer grace and reconciliation, and even then, we are not very grateful.  

God sees our world and our problems and the messes we make.  He continually offers to be with us and willingly provides us His power, grace and mercy in order to help us through the tough times.  What He does not do is make us immune to the broken world we have created.  He is not a genie in a bottle granting wishes to His followers, and He is not putting a bubble around Christians.  Instead, He offers Himself and His power in every circumstance.  

Jesus came to live in our skin and walk in our world to show us the love and the life of the Father.  We have that life anytime we want it.  However, if we would rather walk in our entitlement and blame God when things don’t go the way we think they should, then we may miss the goodness of God.

I am thankful Mr. Trump was spared.  I am grieved that the other man wasn’t.  I am grieved that a twenty-year-old boy was so disillusioned or disturbed that he thought this was appropriate.  I am grieving for this boy’s parents.  This life is not easy, and the answers are not all cut and dry.  The one consistency that we have is the presence of God in the middle of our broken world. 

Life is unfair, but God is always good.