A old Ukrainian folktale tells about two brothers, one rich, the other poor.  Whenever the poor one is beset by misfortune, his brother never wants to help him.  One day, however, the poor brother learns that his troubles are actually due to the actions of some "Imps of Misfortune."  He proceeds to capture these Imps, buries them in a coffin and, subsequently, prospers.
     But when his rich brother finds out about this, he seethes.  He goes to the Imps and promises to set them free so as to bother his brother once more.  The Imps, however, tell him something he didn't expect to hear.
     Because you are offering to free us, they say, we conclude that you, unlike your brother, are good.  So we will bother you instead.
     Does not this seem backwards?  Of course it does.  Normally, we would think the meaner person would suffer more misfortune.
     I tell this story to make a larger point.  It's about grace.  Grace confutes reality; it overturns what is normal and predictable, undermines what what we might think is true. Yet grace cannot be any other way.  The way that an infinite personal God works in our reality will always be a surprise to us, we finite beings who know very little beyond our immediate perception.
     It is God's unpredictability, his wild and, most important, loving, unpredictability, that makes him a God worth believing.
     Ultimately, it's all about God's love, the most vexing and yet most wonderful mystery of all.