An Old Conundrum...

So, I'm musing over the age-old question: why do bad things happen to good people? This was brought sharply to mind after chatting with an old and dear friend online yesterday and I learned of all the tribulations she and her family are going through.

If I was simply cynical, I could say that s#it happens and that's life. I could say that if she (my friend) were the average person. But she's not; she's remarkable and one of the finest human beings its ever been my privilege to have known. To use the highest compliment that Dr. Hugh Black could ever bestow upon someone, "she's a good person."

She's a Chaplain at a hospital who truly believes that she's doing the work that God has set before her: offering guidance, comfort, support and encouragement to people who are (by virtue of being in a hospital) the very definition of people in need of someone who can help provide all these things. She loves what she does even when some weeks seem to be nothing but sadness and loss. She feels like she helps even when she makes the briefest of connections.

She's a moral and upright person who always has time for her friends, is devoted to her family and even adopted a child despite already having two of her own. It might sound cliche, but she honestly has that much love to spare. I'm not trying to say she's perfect or the reincarnation of Mother Teresa, but she's a good and honest human being.

And yet, in a manner of weeks, she and her family are visited by a host of troubles: possible MS, heart problems, I could go on but won't out of respect for her privacy. So she not only has to deal with other people's pain and problems every day but her own to compound things.

Now, I know that EVERY body has personal problems as well as those that stem from work. That *is* life. But here I'm talking about the average person.

It almost seems to me that God has a new Job in my friend. And, I'm sure there are thousands of other people in the world who feel that despite their best efforts to live a good and moral life that they too are Excretus Est Ex Altitudine. *

I don't pretend to be another C.S. Lewis and really theologically "throw down" on topics like this, but the story of Job does leap to mind. For all the petty people there are in the world, why do bad things keep happening to those who spend their lives trying to do the right thing? People who thrive on business might tell you that there are no "problems," only opportunities.

Balls.

It's one thing to see a new merchandising direction because your old one failed miserably, but this comparison fails to stand up under the Halogen light of real life. Angioplasty is not simply another chance to lose weight.

It seems terribly childish of me to look heavenward and yell that it's not fair. Here I can all-too-easily hear my Father telling me that life is NOT fair. But, to be even-handed, he's also fond of saying that A) things generally work out the way they're supposed to, and B) what comes around goes around. Both viable points, but the key word there is "generally." I associate "generally" with "average." So, to my mind, this rules out the truly good people who repeatedly have cosmic deuces dropped in their lap.

Okay, I admit this was a cathartic posting; I don't pretend to have unraveled the fathomless mysteries of the Cosmos, just throwing my metaphorical hat into the ever-widening ring of people who ponder old conundrums like these ... and I scratch my head.

* ("Shat upon from a great height.")