“But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end.” Psalm 73:2-3, 17
It is almost universally assumed that good things should happen to good people and bad things should happen to bad people. We naturally think that actions should dictate outcomes. This inborn expectation of fairness demands that justice be served posthaste and that rewards be bestowed swiftly and displayed prominently. Our sense of morality leaves little tolerance for exceptions to the rule; and while basic logic causes us to lean toward an inherent insistence that good deeds should be rewarded and evil deeds should be punished, reality does not always reflect this idealistic sense of order and sanity. Sometimes we have to wait a long time for the outcome that we expect, and, in some situations, it seems that a satisfactory result is completely impossible. Bad things can happen to good people. Whenever we see this, we can begin to become disoriented to right and wrong. The psalmist is pointing out our tendency to become fixated on the exceptions and begin to lose our ability to make right decisions in our own lives. In verse seventeen, he indicates what enabled him to make sense of it all; considering the end. One day we will all stand before God. When we consider the judgment day, we can easily decide the way that we should live our lives.
Morning: Psalms 72-73
Evening: Romans 9:1-15