Life's Not Fair

Last week I received some terrible, heart-breaking news concerning the family of a former student. You can read the details here.

Another reporter sums it all up when he wrote, "These children have lived a very difficult life." They have experienced so much in the few short years they have been on this Earth. As Wesley and I later talked about it, I couldn't help but cry.

This is a family that I have been in contact with pretty steadily over the past three years, most recently having the cousin (who lived in the same house) as a student in my class this year (until they all moved away). These were students that Wesley and I took to church, took trick or treating, took to basketball games, and more. To be perfectly honest, they were not easy children to love. To my knowledge, they never received the love of Christ into their own lives, but it was shown and told to them.

I don't know that there was anyone who ever showed and told of that love to the 14 year old sister (whom I never met), and that's what breaks my heart - I don't know where a 14 year old girl is now spending eternity. I don't like the feeling that's in my gut.

There's a lot of people on this Earth that are not the easiest people to get along with, and make it very difficult to love.

Take Osama bin Laden. At the news of his death, my heart swelled with pride for my country. I got a little teary watching cadets flock around West Point, baseball fans cheering not for 'their team' but their country, and crowds who had gathered in front of the White House and in Time Square. But, I think it can best be said by a quote I saw on facebook:

"The God of Heaven and Earth knitted Bin Laden together in the womb, loves him, and deeply desired him to repent and believe."

...not wanting any to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

2 Peter 3:9

He desires none to perish and for all to come to repentance ... and that includes you, me, Osama bin Laden, and those students (and people in general) who maybe difficult to love.

I've struggled off and on with going back to work. I love my job, I really do, but I've thrown my share of pity parties. My husband has offered to let me quit my job and he'll get a second (or third or whatever it takes) for me to stay home with Eli (he's the greatest). But I don't want that for him either. I want to see my husband, and I want my child to have his father at home to play with at night and on the weekends.

And, these students are on my heart.

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?

Romans 10:14

It's easy to think of this verse in reference to 'going on a mission trip', but what about those people who live in your town? Or as in this case, lived less than five miles away. Will they spend eternity in His courts, or will they be eternally separated and without hope? So, at least for now, I teach.