For everyone who maybe thinking about what is "fair" to them and what is not, the following story was told on Sunday at my Church...

(bare with me on any mis-spellings...)
It was during the Vietnam war. One day a children's orphanage was bombed in Vietnam. Many children were seriously injured in the blast, while there were some who had no marks whatsoever. There was an American nurse there who spoke a little Vietnamese. She was caring for this little girl who was injured in the blast (maybe 7 or 8 years old). The girl was losing a lot of blood and unless they got her more blood quickly, she would die. They asked the other people and the uninjured children, "who would be willing to donate some blood for the girl?". Several raised their hands and were "typed for a match", but only one little boy, around the
same age as the girl, was a match.

They quickly hooked him up and began drawing blood. After a few minutes the boy began to cry. The American nurse asked in her best Vietnamese if he was OK, and if anything hurt. He said "Nothing hurt". Another minute passed and the boy began to weep, then it turned in to an uncontrollable sob. Again the nurse asked if he was OK and the boy said "yes he was". But he did not stop crying. After a few minutes the nurse went out and asked a Vietnamese woman (who also spoke English) to come and talk with the boy. After a minute of talking back and forth in Vietnamese, the boy calmed down.

The nurse walked outside with the other woman and asked what was the matter with the boy. She said "He thought you had to take ALL his blood and that he was going to die". The nurse was amazed and began to well up with tears. She walked back in and asked the boy (via the other woman) "why would you agree to do this for the little girl, if you thought you were going to die?" The boy raised his head and simply said...

"Because she is my friend"
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It made me think a LOT about what is truly important and how much would I really "give" to my partner if called upon by God???... So often we feel we are being taken advantage of in a situation or somthing is "not fair" - What about this boy? Willing to lay down his life for "a friend"...

Makes ya think....

God bless,
Mike

I try not to think in terms of "fairness". The truth is, I probably have already received more blessings in my life than most people ever receive in an entire lifetime. If life were "fair", then I reckon the rest of my life ought to be cursed.

I've been reading some "Christian" books lately about dating and courting, and one idea that keeps popping up is the notion that if I am faithful to God and wait on Him I will be rewarded with the "right" relationship. Frankly, I don't buy it.

Oh sure, most of the books do throw a chapter in there about the rewards of singleness, and suggest that permanent singleness may be God's plan for some people - but I have yet to find an account in one of these books about someone who actually hoped to remain single for his or her entire life. Instead, virtually every illustrative story these books contain is a touching little tale about how God provided the right mate. The happy singles are those who live in the "now" and trust God, albeit with a door cracked perpetually open to the possibility of eventual marriage.

Some people live relatively "charmed" lives. Some...don't. God obviously doesn't play fair, and I'm guessing that He has some bigger plan which doesn't have room for our human concept of fairness.

I don't know what God has in mind for my life. I do know that I would rather receive blessing than fairness (I'm selfish that way), but in the end I have to trust that whatever God has in mind for me will be better in the long run than any plan I might construct for myself.

Faithfulness really is its own reward.