“(…) Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob” Malachi 1:2

It is common that before some circumstances of life, people sometimes unwillingly exclaim “How unfair life is!” It is indeed the kind of reaction we instinctively have for example in front of a person who, despite a very difficult childhood, succeeded in having degrees after rough fights and sustained effort just to end up becoming a porter as a result of vain attempts to get a role that aligns with his training.

Meanwhile another one who has not passed through the rough and stressful channels or formal training and who nobody thinks has the qualities and the minimal qualification required for some positions, swiftly takes the normally difficult steps of the professional and social ladder. The best trained people for those positions will almost shout in unison “How unfair life is!”

One would almost state that it is in life’s nature to be or seem unfair, especially when one considers as well the notion of grace which refers to a favour and which, in turn means absence of merit, thereby confirming a form of singularity which is but not meritorious.

It is indeed that grace which helps understand why, of all Jacob’s son, Joseph became in the end the greatest. That same grace explains why in Malachi, God expressed his preference to Jacob to the detriment of his twin brother Esau. It will therefore be very uneasy for us to understand the energy that drives some people to success as long as our analysis will consider more merit criteria than grace factor.

God’s grace does not use conventional ways. It is an energy that bypasses social and societal codes, uses uncommon channels, drives some people in whom human eyes identify but weaknesses, gaps and inadequacies to places which are, in normal times, reserved to scholars and those who are full to repletion with knowledge and standards and prone to dignity and preferment.

With that understanding, all “Life is unfair” that you hear will henceforth rather sound to your ears like “God’s grace is or is not in action in the life of this person”

Stay blessed!