About an
hour after I posted “We Reap What We Sow” to my blog yesterday, I began
thinking about the other side of the principle that we reap what we sow. I mentioned that even farming seems like
gambling because we can’t control the weather. This is because there are no
guarantees in life—not in the way control freaks wish there were. Input doesn’t
always equal output. It’s the harsh truth of the saying that bad things still
happen to good people.
I don’t
mean to get complicated and mathematical. But I want to ask you—do you believe
that input (what you do now, how you fulfill or don’t fulfill your
responsibilities, how you invest your time, how you treat people, how you spend
money, etc.) equals output (what actually happens to you)?
Is that true? When
we think about our actions and what we put into our life, I think we have to
consider two ideas. In one hand, we can
hold onto the reality that input affects output while holding in the
other hand the reality that input
doesn’t always equal output.
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| Emily & I in 2008 |
In college,
my roommate Emily and I were sitting at lunch with a few friends. One guy told us about how his parents had
adopted two girls about 10 years before he was born. He talked about how it had been a rough process
for the family, and things didn’t turn out the way his parents had hoped. Now one of the daughters never speaks to the
family, and the other rarely does.
As I
listened to his story, I stopped eating my lunch and was so sad as I thought
about how that would feel as a parent. “Wow,” I said. “I can’t imagine what your parents have gone
through. Just pouring their love out
year after year for their daughters and never getting anything in return.”
But he
looked at me and immediately answered, “Well, that’s what love is. Loving without expecting anything in return.”
Then he took another bite of his sandwich.
I looked over at Emily with my eyes wide.
Later Emily
and I discussed our friend’s family—specifically how his parents had sacrificed
and were seemingly not seeing good results from the investment of their love,
time, and money into their daughters’ lives.
Honestly, I was really disturbed by it.
Why hadn’t God blessed their effort and brought unity to their family?
His parents had done the right thing, so why didn’t God make it turn out happily
ever after?
I guess I
wanted justice; I wanted the guarantee that if I do something good and right,
then it will turn out well. Emily
listened and told me what I needed to hear: “But there is no guarantee.” She
didn’t like that answer either, but she knew enough of life, enough of
heartache to know that much. I wanted to argue with her, but I knew she was
right.
That
conversation was 6 years ago. If I could speak to the 20-year-old me, I would
say that the story isn’t over for that family—and none of us but God knows all
the details to the story. I don’t know
what God is doing even now in those daughters’ lives and how He still is using
the love from their parents to minister to their hearts. I don’t know how God may be bringing the
redemption and reconciliation that those parents have been praying for. And as an amazing byproduct, those parents
successfully modeled to their son what the real definition of love is.
Maybe you
can relate to this set of parents. Maybe
you’ve invested so much time and energy into someone’s life, but you’ve been
devastated by the lack of love you’ve received in return. Maybe you faithfully put in the work to build
up a business, but then people still took advantage of you, and now things are
not how you hoped they’d be—not even close.
Maybe you’re frustrated like me
because there seem to be no guarantees in life.
But who would want a robotic, mathematical world?
I have several thoughts that spin off of this, but I am curious: How would you end this post?
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