Victor Borge, the Danish comedian and pianist, once said that the composer Georges Bizet was the original hard-luck man. Bizet stayed up all night to finish an opera by a deadline—only to learn the production had been postponed for a year. He wrote a symphony and promptly misplaced the manuscript before anyone could play it. He entered a music contest with just one other competitor—and somehow managed to come in second. And once, when visiting his sweetheart, he tapped on her window at the very moment her mother emptied a chamber pot from the window above his head!

Some people just seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Others would say the same about their own lives. They imagine that a different spouse, a different job, or a different circumstance would finally make things right. John Micofsky certainly thought so. He believed his life would be much improved if only he could be rid of his wife. His wish came true on January 20, 1993, when his divorce was finalized. On January 21—just one day later—his ex-wife, Maryann Kulpa, claimed the $10.2 million New Jersey Pick-6 jackpot. When reporters asked about Mr. Micofsky’s condition, his attorney replied dryly, “Very upset… I think that’s the word I would use.”

It’s hard not to laugh—but stories like that make us ask: Why is life so unfair?

That question touches something deep in all of us. We want life to make sense, for good to be rewarded and evil punished. When we see a movie, we expect justice to prevail before the credits roll. When it doesn’t, we feel cheated. C. S. Lewis once said that our very sense of “unfairness” is a signpost pointing to God. If we feel that things ought to be fair, it must be because we are made in the image of a God who is perfectly just.

The Bible is full of that longing. Remember Abraham’s bold conversation with God over the fate of Sodom: “What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you destroy it?” Abraham argues the number down to ten, but the question that echoes through the ages is this: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” The answer, affirmed by the Law and the Prophets alike, is yes—God is righteous, and His justice is sure.

When we think of Jesus, we often think of mercy and forgiveness—and rightly so—but He also affirmed the justice of God. He told the story of a widow who was treated unfairly. She sought help from a corrupt judge who “feared neither God nor man.” He ignored her again and again, but she refused to give up. She kept coming back until the judge finally said, “Because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice.”

Jesus’ conclusion is powerful: “And will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones, who cry to Him day and night?”

So let’s begin here: We live in a world that is sometimes terribly unjust. We learned early that “whatever a person sows, that they shall also reap.” Yet, many times, we reap what others have sown, and the innocent suffer without explanation.

Consider Arthur Ashe—the tennis champion who broke racial barriers on and off the court. In 1983 he underwent heart-bypass surgery, and in those days hospitals did not yet test blood for HIV. Through a transfusion, he contracted the virus that would eventually take his life. When the rumor became public, Ashe faced it with remarkable faith. At a press conference in 1992 he said:

“I’ve had a religious faith all my life. I was reminded of something Jesus said on the cross: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Jesus asked the question of why the innocent suffer. And I ask myself, ‘Why me?’ But then I think, ‘Why not me?’ Why should I be spared what others endure? I think of all the good things—my wife, my daughter, my friends, my career—and I can only give thanks. Sometimes there are no explanations for the bad, especially for the bad.”

What an extraordinary witness. He refused to see himself as a victim of divine unfairness. Instead, he recognized that life is a mixture of roses and thorns, and that faith allows us to find meaning even in the pain.

That leads us to a second truth: sometimes suffering can be redemptive. Not all suffering, perhaps, but some. “What does not kill me makes me stronger,” goes the saying. And for people of faith, suffering can also make us holier—more compassionate, more dependent on God, more aware of what truly matters.

Dave Dravecky, once a major-league pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, learned this firsthand. Cancer invaded his pitching arm. He fought back bravely, made a miraculous comeback, and then lost that arm to the disease. Later he said, “From spending so much time in hospitals, I’ve learned that when we walk into the room of someone who is suffering, we must respect the sanctity of that room.” He discovered that suffering itself can be holy ground. It is often in the valley of pain that people finally reach out for God.

Dravecky said, “God doesn’t promise us a life full of mountaintop experiences. There are valleys—dark valleys, valleys of depression and despair. But God doesn’t hand us a map to avoid them; He walks beside us through them. And when we look back, we realize that’s where the growth happened—not on the mountaintops, but in the valleys.”

That’s profound spiritual wisdom. And it echoes what George Matheson, the blind Scottish minister and poet, once wrote. When his eyesight failed, his fiancée left him. Out of that heartbreak he composed the beloved hymn ‘O Love That Will Not Let Me Go.’ But he also wrote this private prayer:

“My God, I have never thanked Thee for my thorns. I have thanked Thee a thousand times for my roses, but not once for my thorns. Teach me the glory of my cross; teach me the value of my thorn. Show me that I have climbed to Thee by the path of pain. Show me that my tears have made my rainbow.”

Beautiful words—born of faith tested by sorrow.

Not everyone can thank God for the thorns. Some wounds cut too deep. But for those who keep their faith, even tears can become the colors of a rainbow—the sign of God’s covenant love.

And that brings us to the final truth of this homily: Justice will be done.

Write it down, hold it in your heart, repeat it to yourself in dark hours: God’s justice will prevail.

When tyranny seems invincible, when good people suffer, when the wicked prosper—remember that injustice does not have the final word. In the last days of the Soviet empire, Czech students gathered in the streets of Prague. As they faced the Communist regime, they chanted, “You have lost already! You have lost already!” Their victory was still in the future, but they believed it was inevitable. “This is unstoppable,” said one of their leaders. He was right. Justice is unstoppable, because it belongs to God.

Tell that to any power that oppresses, any darkness that seeks to crush the light: God’s justice will prevail.

Hold on to it like a piece of driftwood when the floods of sorrow rise around you. Teach it to your children when the world seems to reward deceit. Live by it in your workplace, your family, and your prayer: God’s justice will prevail.

There was a moment of poetic justice in Berlin some years ago. The San Francisco Giants and San Diego Chargers played an exhibition football game in the old Olympic Stadium. In the stands sat Marty Glickman, once an Olympic sprinter in 1936. Because he was Jewish, he had been pulled from the American relay team so that Hitler would not be offended. That day in Berlin, however, Glickman watched the game from the very same box that had once been built for Hitler himself. “It was strange sitting there,” he said. “I remembered marching into the stadium and looking up to see him.”

The tyrant who once seemed untouchable was long gone, a victim of his own evil. The man he tried to humiliate sat in his seat. That is how God’s justice works—slowly at times, but surely.

The story of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, tells us that evil will not have the last word. The Judge of all the earth will do right. Christ Himself asked, “Will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones who cry to Him day and night?” Yes, He will. Perhaps not as quickly as we wish, but inevitably, perfectly, eternally.

So when you feel discouraged, remember this: life may be unfair, but God is not.

The same God who walked with Arthur Ashe through illness, who strengthened Dave Dravecky through loss, who turned George Matheson’s tears into a hymn, walks with you too.

And one day, every wrong will be made right. Every tear will be wiped away. Every valley will be lifted up. Because God’s justice—gentle, merciful, and unstoppable—will prevail.

Amen.