Yesterday morning I was issued a citation for failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign, where I honestly did stop! Now I’m not saying that I paused long enough to have breakfast or to enter into a lengthy dialogue with my children – it was more like a “blink and you’ll miss my brake lights” maneuver – but I did stop. I was in the process of taking my kids to school, and had just turned out of our neighborhood, when I saw the flashing lights in my rearview mirror. A mere second before, my son had remarked, “Good thing you stopped mom, ‘cause there’s a policeman right there.” The officer approached my window and explained to me the reason that we were having this early morning rendezvous. Wanting to be respectful, but not wanting to get a ticket for something I hadn’t done, I told him that I truly had stopped, to which he replied (in a sarcastic tone) that he didn’t pull me over for no reason and that I could contest it in court….
Well…at this point my daughter, with her strong sense of justice, was irate. She told me that this incident had “stirred a fire within her” and that she was heading into school to write about it – debating if she would compile a list of facts or record it in narrative form. She insisted that I take it to court. I have to confess that I was none to pleased myself. It’s not that there haven’t been countless of other times when I could have rightfully been pulled over for committing a wrong, but this was not one of them. I too felt that I was treated unjustly.
When wrongs are committed against us (even extremely minor ones like I experienced yesterday) something rises up within us calling out for justice. We long for wrongs to be made right and for fairness to reign, but the reality is that each of us will undergo countless experiences within our lifetime that feel unjust. These experiences can truly be tough on our faith. “Why doesn’t God do something?” we ask. Yet, we can be absolutely sure that He is doing something. God never steps off of His throne, and anything that touches our life is meant to somehow be an instrument for our good, helping us to depend on and delight in Him more fully. We can also be assured that there will come a day when God will say, “ENOUGH!” and Jesus will once again return and set right every wrong that has ever been committed. So whether it is something as minor as a traffic ticket or as major as human trafficking, may we trust that God is good, that God is in control, and that God will bring about justice. May we rejoice that our Savior already paid the price for the wrongs that we committed against Him, and may we place our confidence in the character of God that is promised to us in Deuteronomy 32:4 – “He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.”
