But That is Unfair!

But That is Unfair!

God can do as he pleases. He is sovereign and we are not. He can choose to give certain gifts to some people, but not to others. He can allow one Christian to go through all sorts of hardships and trials, while another might seem to go through life relatively unscathed in this regard.

While driving home today from a speaking engagement, I was stuck at a traffic light. I noticed a billboard ad for some legal firm. The wording on it was something like: “We can challenge an unfair will.” It got me thinking (as most things do). Just what is an unfair will exactly?

I am no legal expert so I may stand to be corrected here, but if the main beef is you do not like what was left to you – or not left to you – in someone’s will, then that is one thing. If a will was made fraudulently or under duress, that might be another matter. But if the main concern is the first option, then it seems a bit off.

After all, does not a person have the right to make out a will as he or she sees fit? It is their property or money or assets, etc., that they are deciding on as to where it all ends up. Maybe some old woman has three sons. She makes a will, and when she passes on, the three discover that two of them each got 40 per cent of the goods, while the third only got 20 per cent.

Obliviously the third son might well think this is unfair: ‘Should we each not have gotten 33 1/3 per cent?’ Well, the woman is entitled to do as she wishes here – it is her stuff that she is passing on. She might have left it all to some charity and left the sons nothing.

Or she might have given each son ten per cent, and left the rest to others, or to other causes. That is her prerogative. It is her stuff after all. And there might be good reasons why she did the 40/40/20 split. Perhaps the third son was a real rascal who never helped the mother, while the other two did.

So why am I writing about all this? Well, as is so often the case, I find it very easy to turn the stuff I come upon into sermon material. I find it quite easy to translate something I have seen or read or heard into a spiritual discussion.

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