Why Bad Luck Is Like A Compliment

This post is a bit heavy for a Monday, and actually I wrote it on a Friday a few weeks ago. But, this blog is sort of my catch all for everything in my mind and my life so I felt I should include it. Feel free to skip till Wednesday 🙂

I’ve had a pretty good streak of bad luck lately. Some small things, some big, none debilitating, but enough to provide me with a big fat chance to get really down and depressed (although I haven’t thankfully!). I feel like I’ve been literally pleading with God in every single prayer to do this, or take that away, or help me with such-and-such. I haven’t gotten an answer to any of those desperate pleas yet, but in his perfect timing I did receive a little insight.

A few weeks back our preacher was speaking in a series called Why God? I’m sure you can all relate to this series. I doubt any of us haven’t found ourselves looking to the heavens asking this very question. Life, at times, makes no sense and doesn’t seem fair. Anyway, in the sermon he made a comment that has replayed itself about a million times in my head.

He said, “God forgives us our penalties, but not our consequences.”

At first I interpreted that to mean that God forgives us, and in forgiving us, lightens the punishment that we would otherwise receive. But after talking to husband about it, he explained he understood it to mean that we will receive God’s forgiveness, but we still have to deal with the consequences of our actions, no matter how harsh they are. The more I thought about it, the more his interpretation made sense.

I don’t know about you, but speaking for myself, I know I’ve prayed for forgiveness and I believed with that forgiveness not only was I getting myself back into God’s good graces, but I thought my actions and all the repercussions of them just went away. In reality, when we make those poor decisions, we set into motion a series of results; results that include the consequences of those actions. When we are met with the harsh repercussions of what we’ve done, it isn’t God turning his back on us, if anything he’s there even more so to help us through those times, it’s life and the world bringing back to us what we’ve caused.

I don’t know if I’m necessarily saying that all my bad luck can be attributed to some stupid mistake I made in the past, sometimes life just sucks, you deal with it and move on, but on some of the bigger things I can’t help but wonder what I did to deserve them. Sometimes I wonder why some people seem to float through life with good luck constantly shining down on them. Why do some people live charmed lives? Why do some people live questionably but never seem to be convicted about it? Where is karma when it comes to those that have hurt us or others?

Then I realize that my questions all have to do with someone else’s journey, and someone else’s relationship with God. I also realize that life isn’t really about deserving and not deserving. I mean, what exactly did we all do to deserve to live in the first place right? I realize that each moment that I encounter in my own personal journey, is about handling in the way God wants ME to handle it. It’s about MY relationship with him. It’s about him shaping and molding me to be the person he wants ME to be. When you think about it like that, you really can’t compare anything in your life to someone else’s. It’s apples and oranges.

I think this is where faith comes in. Faith that things do happen for a reason, whether the reason is because you have brought it on yourself or because God has put it in your life to push you in the right direction. Faith that even though you may not see the end result of of the interactions, positive or negative, in your life, eventually he will take care of them. Faith that karma isn’t real, but God is.

And after getting through that understanding, I’ve begun to look at my bad luck as character builders. You could even look at them as little compliments from God, because he believes knows you are capable of handling them. He knows just how strong you are, he’s just allowing you to see it and believe it for yourself.