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.