When Others Treat You Unfairly

Our broken world is full of unfairness. You might have a sibling who your parents have always treated as their favorite child. No matter how much you try to impress your parents and get them to see what you can do, their eyes are always on that sibling. This can leave you feeling frustrated or even heartbroken. Maybe you have someone who was always a friend to you until someone new started at your school. Now that person has moved on from you and all their plans revolve around their new friend. This can be hurtful, and it could make you doubt yourself and your value. But God showed how valuable you are by giving His Son for you. Jesus came to live among us, and He knows what it’s like to be treated unfairly. His friends abandoned Him, and the authorities treated Him like a criminal—even though He had done nothing wrong. But Jesus was willing to go to the cross, to die a death He didn’t deserve, and to raise from the dead—all so that you could become part of God’s family. People might treat you unfairly for any number of reasons, but the way other humans treat you has no impact on how God feels about you. God loves each of us with the same kind of love. God holds your hand, and He is there for you. God gave His Son to die for you. God sees the pain you are in, and He cares about you. While life on this earth is not fair and humans often mistreat each other, you can trust that God is going to love you always, and He is never going to mistreat you. • Emily Acker • Can you think of a time you were treated as less than someone else? How might it be comforting to know that Jesus experienced this too? • When we are treated unfairly, God has compassion on us. He invites us to cry out to Him in our pain and remember how He feels about us. Consider taking a moment to come to Jesus in prayer. The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.” Jeremiah 31:3 (NIV)