Have you ever heard this protest from a child: “It just isn’t fair!” When a cake or pie needs to be cut up and shared among siblings, children love to carefully scrutinize each piece to ensure they get their fair share.
This might make parents smile, but how often do we do the same as grownups? Do we sometimes scrutinize others’ lives and compare them with our own? This can lead to a feeling that life “owes” us something; we feel entitled to exactly the same blessings everybody else has. We look around and see people who seem to have perfect health, perfect families, or an abundance of material wealth, and we might wonder why they got a bigger slice of the pie than we did.
Of course, challenges and adversities, blessings and opportunities, never match point for point. Measuring our happiness against what others appear to have is rarely an accurate comparison anyway. For one thing, we don’t know the details of people’s lives or the hidden burdens they carry. And if we did, we might be surprised how blessed we really are in comparison.
When two little boys came to their mother complaining that life wasn’t fair, she sat down with them and taught them about all the people who had no shoes, no opportunity for education, no loving family to care for them, and very little food to eat. One boy caught the message and realized that if life really were fair, his life might be quite different. “I guess I’m lucky life isn’t fair,” he said. He didn’t lose his desire for fairness, but after that, it no longer led him to want more for himself; rather, it inspired him to reach out in compassion to the less fortunate.
Yes, life often is unfair—usually in our favor. But even when we do have troubles that seem unmerited, even when we have problems and worries that seem overwhelming, it might help to take a moment to enlarge our perspective. This may include humbly counting our blessings and giving thanks for the good things we have. More often than not, such thoughts inspire us to make life just a little more fair by sharing our blessings with others.
July 16, 2017
Broadcast Number 4,583
Mormon Tabernacle Choir
Orchestra at Temple Square
Conductors
Mack Wilberg
Ryan Murphy
Guest Artist
Alex Boyé
Organist
Richard Elliott
Host
Lloyd Newell
When in Our Music God Is Glorified
Traditional hymn tune; arr. Emily Crocker
Lead, Kindly Light
John B. Dykes; arr. Mack Wilberg
Symphony no. 2 for Organ and Orchestra, Mvt. V, “Allegro con brio”
Fèlix-Alexandre Guilmant
Count Your Blessings instead of Sheep, from White Christmas
Irving Berlin; arr. Michael Davis
I Want Jesus to Walk with Me
Spiritual; arr. Moses Hogan
I’m Runnin’ On
Spiritual; arr. Mack Wilberg