Receive the same treatment as sinners ...

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This, too, I carefully explored: Even though the actions of godly and wise people are in God’s hands, no one knows whether God will show them favor. The same destiny ultimately awaits everyone, whether righteous or wicked, good or bad, ceremonially clean or unclean, religious or irreligious. Good people receive the same treatment as sinners, and people who make promises to God are treated like people who don’t. -Ecclesiastes 9:1-2

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Jesus Christ seems to echo this sentiment in the Sermon on the Mount when he says that God "gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike." There is something about life that levels the playing field - the best and the worst of us can experience the joys of family and the devastation of cancer. Many theologians have struggled with this and have asked the question of why bad things happen to good people.

When I think about the bad things that have happened in my life I see it more as the result of a fallen world than a fallen God. In the beginning God created all things and called them good. Yet he ceded a bit of his sovereignty, at a micro level, to his creation and bad things eventually began to happen as people began to make decisions. Some decisions seemed to originate in faith while many originated elsewhere. That challenge remains today. Will we respond in faith?

Help us Lord to always respond in faith - to the good and bad things of life.

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