GodReflection: Life with the Unfair

Was Mrs. Dorsey right?

You know Mrs. Dorsey.

Everyone knows Mrs. Dorsey. God especially knows her. She chatters with Him throughout the day.

Her Bible is the King James Version. Her familiarity with the Book comes from her childhood. She practically knows it by heart. Her copy—obviously not her first—shows extreme wear.

The cover has a faded streak on the front and the back—connected by the worn spine—where her hands secure it as she opens it at home across her lap, reads it on her kitchen table, and carried it to church.

You can’t see the calluses on her knees for the length of the hem on her dress. Her rough knees come from years of showing her gratitude to God and pleading to Him on the behalf of others. Like Abraham, everyone knows—without asking—she is a friend of God.

I met Mrs. Dorsey in 1977. Our blond-hair, blue-eye newborn twin was plagued by around the clock seizures. The diagnosis was in. We had consulted with a neuropediatrician and a pediatrician at the neonatal unit of a large research hospital.

Physical examinations, electronic brain scans, research studies, and collective wisdom declared a bleak prognosis. Not only would he not walk—most likely—he would live out his life without awareness of his surrounding and of the people who loved him most.

Such a bleak prognosis did not faze Mrs. Dorsey. Each time we met, we received her reaffirmation that our baby would be well.

She was pleading to God on his behalf. We could rest assured, he would be healed.

We loved Mrs. Dorsey but had seen the medical exams, understood the medical prognosis, and even though we were young, we had experienced enough in life to see that rain and sorrow fall on the just and unjust.

It seemed to me life wasn’t fair.

I began to express my conclusions to Mrs. Dorsey. There are things God can’t do. His cuffed hands are unable to act. Those exchanges with Mrs. Dorsey took place almost forty years ago.

Twenty-one years later, our family surrounded the coffin as we buried our little boy who had never spoken a word nor taken a step.

The same question faces each of us as we encounter life. Even though I am a Believer, and trust my life to God, and His Son Jesus, was Mrs. Dorsey right?

Or, did my unbelief in the possibility of a miraculous act stop God from intervening?

Is it possible that Gods’ tied hands prohibits Him from acting, thus the result being the unfairness we experience in life?

Since that experience with Mrs. Dorsey, I am left with the conclusion that there are some things God cannot do. At least not yet—His hands are tied.

I find my reality to be the fact that life is lived with the unfair.

I see the Adamic yeast of Satan still simmering and bubbling in the fabric of God’s Creation.

Parallel to the Satan story I see God’s Holy yeast at work. It too is penetrating into destruction, the fallen, and the damaged to recreate into perfection what Satan has scarred.

Is it possible that God’s heart is Omni-Big? So big that He can’t help Himself but to wait until all on earth who search for His healing presence have ample opportunity to find Him?

Is it possible that God hands are still bound even in light of Satan’s limited rule set in motion by the cross?

However, when God sends Jesus back to earth to close out the harvest, He will set His own hands free in the act of placing handcuffs and shackles on Satan and duct tape over his mouth.

He will cast Satan from our lives forever. That’s an eternal forever.

The good news is that even though evil, death, and destruction, still have a foothold in the world, God set in motion a plan through Jesus that assures me safe passage on my life’s trail. It may take some Band-Aids but I will arrive safely at my final destination.

Stay tuned.

Dr. Gary J. Sorrells 

A GodReflection on Are God’s Hands Tied?

Gary@Godreflection.org     www.MakeYourVisionGoViral.com    

www.GodReflection.org