Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don’t you? You think you deserve it. I did anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life’s business. — Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending.
What is the saying — God doesn’t promise a comfortable life, only comfort? Or words to that effect. How often have I said about a friend, family member, or even myself that “He or she deserves a break” when life seems to be piling on. (As an aside when’s the last time you saw a ‘piling on’ penalty called in football? I can’t remember one.).
The character in Julian Barnes’ Man Booker Prize winning novel, The Sense of an Ending, has lived a good life and ready to enjoy a secure retirement when life catches up with him and he is forced to revise his own view of his nature and place in the world.
I bet all of my readers have been forced by circumstances to reexamine one’s life. It was Plato who suggested that an “unexamined life is not worth living” I believe. Sometimes that examination is not the prettiest of pictures, certainly in my case.
But that’s where God enters the picture. Where life is often cruel, harsh, and unforgiving, God is loving, caring, and forgiving. Life sometimes offers trophies and medals of merit to the undeserving, and ignores the deserving, but God doesn’t operate that way. He offers welcoming arms and unconditional love to all who seek it out.
Pretty cool how it all works out, isn’t it?
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