This week I’ve been thinking about how unfair life sometimes
is. For example, a teenager I know was
recently in a terrible car accident. The
accident was not her fault and she came out alright, but the person in the
other car died as a result. I have a
hard time understanding what she must be experiencing and the thoughts that
must sometimes run through her head because of the accident. And to be honest, I have a hard time
understanding why she has to endure this when the biggest concerns of many her
age are what to eat for lunch or whom to ask to the upcoming dance.
Similar stories of how life can be tragic for some seem to
always be around.
Boyd K. Packer once said, “Life was never meant to be either
easy or fair.” (“And a Little Child Shall Lead Them”, April 2012).
But why? Why isn’t
life fair? I understand that we all need
trials. But why does it seem like some
people experience trials so much harder than what others experience? It seems that at every age level there are
inequities. In my high school teaching,
I see teenagers who struggle with these things every day. And sometimes it’s seemingly simple problems,
not the horrible tragedies, which make me wonder the most. Boys question why others are more athletic or
funny. Girls wonder why they aren’t more
pretty or personable.
Well, my answer to all of these questions: I don’t
know.
At least for now.
But some day I will.
And that will be a wonderful day.
As Emily Dickinson wrote:
“I shall know why, when time is over,
And I have ceased to wonder why;
Christ will explain each separate anguish
In the fair schoolroom of the sky.
He will tell me what Peter promised,
And I, for wonder at his woe,
I shall forget the drop of anguish
That scalds me now, that scalds me now.”
(Poems of
Emily Dickinson, p. 93)
Or, as Jeffrey R. Holland said, “It will be all
right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.” (“An High
Priest of Good Things to Come”, Oct 1999)
So that’s what I’ll try to do.
