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But they won the lottery. More than $600,000.

And, in the house next door, Kaitlyn is dying.

I know a man who loves God and serves him with deep and heartfelt dedication. He soaks himself in the Word of God and then pours it out. He lives far beyond borderland, deep in the holy wild. Yet nothing seems to go right for him. He is a self-employed tradesman. He has honed skill, wide expertise, years of experience. He works hard. The problem isn't getting work. The problem isn't people not liking the work he does. The problem is that many of the people who hire him don't pay him, or pay him much less than they had agreed they would. There is always some reason or another. But after a few years of this, it begins to look like a cosmic conspiracy, like a Jobian wager God made with the Devil to see if a good man would curse him. To see if a man living in the holy wild, with a heart burning within, could be tempted back to borderland, slow-hearted, defeated.

The money problems are only part of the difficulty. Disaster seems to lay ambush for this man. In any given week, he can be served with an eviction notice for nonpayment of rent, have the utility company threaten to cut off his heat and light if he doesn't pay his bill in 24 hours, have one of his children do something to break his heart, have no food to put on the table, and in the middle of all that have the car break down, the water heater explode, another client fail to pay him, or any number of niggling mishaps occur. It's like the plagues of Exodus—gnats, flies, locusts, frogs—one after the next, swarming, attacking, pestering, devouring.

And he's one of the good guys.

Recently I asked him how he was doing. "Things have been better," he said. "But I'm trying not to get my hopes up."

Life isn't fair.

The psalmist knew the experience and wrote about it with refreshing and disarming frankness:

As for me, my foot had almost slipped;
    I had nearly lost my foothold.
For I envied the arrogant
    when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
They have no struggles;
    their bodies are healthy and strong.
They are free from the burdens common
    to man;
They are not plagued by human ills . …
Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure;
    in vain have I washed my hands in innocence.
All day long I have been plagued;
    I have been punished every morning.
(Psalm 73:2-5, 13-14)

My friend could have written this.

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April 23 2001, Vol. 45, No. 6