In Ecclesiastes 8:14, the wisest man who ever lived, said with great frustration that from our human perspective there doesn’t appear to be any real justice in life. The wicked are often rewarded, the righteous often suffer and the innocent victims have no redress of grievances. He calls this all “vanity of vanities.” This means it doesn’t make any sense! But the views expressed by Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes often depict things the way they appear to be to us. God’s justice “under the sun” is often illusive. Job expressed the same frustration amidst the injustices he suffered. When he failed to find justice in life he said, “I go east, but he is not there. I go west, but I cannot find him. I do not see him in the north, for he is hidden. I look to the south, but he is concealed” (Job 23:8-9).

Yet both Job and Solomon trust that there will one day be a reckoning. Job says, “But he knows where I am going. And when he tests me, I will come out as pure as gold” (Job 23:10). Solomon argues that death, the great equalizer in life, will come to all men. When he argues that there is a time for every purpose under heaven, he includes a time to die. At such time all wrongs will be made right. As Job was vindicated and blessed beyond measure in the end, so too will the innocent victims of all ages. The babies slaughtered by Herod in Bethlehem as well as the babies slaughtered in Connecticut. Any evasion of God’s purposes is only temporary. You see “…it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,” says Hebrews 9:27. And one chapter later we read this sobering verse: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31).

I read that Paul Harvey illustrated this point when he told about a man named Gary Tindle who was charged with robbery. While standing in the California courtroom of Judge Armando Rodriguez, Tindle asked permission to go to the bathroom. He was escorted upstairs to the bathroom, and the door was guarded while he was inside. But Tindle, determined to escape, climbed up the plumbing, opened a panel in the ceiling, and started slithering through the crawl space, heading south. He had traveled some thirty feet when the ceiling panels broke under him, and he dropped to the floor—right back in Judge Rodriguez’s courtroom! God’s perfect righteousness will not be frustrated in the end. Sooner or later the wheels of justice will right every wrong, balance very scale, and correct every injustice in the world. Longfellow included this truth in one of his poems where he compared God’s justice to the grinding mills that turn wheat into flour. He says:

Though the mills of God grind slowly
Yet they grind exceedingly small,
Though with patience He stands waiting
With exactness He grinds all.