I was listening to Big Whiskey, Dave Matthew’s latest album, the other day while the wife and I came back from our canoeing trip and became fascinated by the words to the song Funny The Way It Is.

Funny the way it is, if you think about it
Somebody’s going hungry and someone else is eating out
Funny the way it is, not right or wrong
Somebody’s heart is broken and it becomes your favorite song

Funny the way it is, if you think about it
One kid walks 10 miles to school, another’s dropping out
Funny the way it is, not right or wrong
On a soldier’s last breath his baby’s being born

Funny, or not so funny, the way it is when you think about the contrasts one life has from the next. Most of the time it’s not so funny.

Like seeing children, the same age as yours, struggle through life with little to no resources to get them by. Children with parents that abuse them. Or in undeveloped countries, parents who simply can’t provide food and water and have to be the one who carries their dead child to the grave.

Funny the way it is. Or not so funny.

I remember befriending a kid in grade school who, when first meeting him, told me of the time his stepdad was drunk and was driving a motorcycle and he was on the back. The stepdad crashed the bike and this young man had his leg amputated.

… not so funny.

It can be disheartening to compare the stories of those around us, and even our own story, to lives more glamorous as ours and not wish that life were easier, more simple. As a Christian, I’ve thought it too many times, thinking that our lives as believers should not be so difficult. We are, as a matter of fact, children of the Almighty – a name that resounds with power and authority. Shouldn’t these things not happen to us, His followers?

I’m always brought back to the passage in Matthew 5 where it talks about “loving your enemies” and “praying for those who persecute you.” Matthew goes on to talk about the nature of God and says, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Funny the way God is. He has made us all unique. He has given us an opportunity to follow His Son, Jesus, but that opportunity will someday end. It’s pleasing to know that we serve a God who allows the good and the bad to befall us, to humble us, and to keep us always in need of a Savior.