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Mills of God

The narrator in Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead says of a descipable character who winds up dead early in the book:

 In my view he should have received several Punishments by now, or even been sent to prison. I don’t know how he got away with it all. Perhaps there were some angels watching over him; sometimes they turn up on the wrong side.

 Many among us  know someone in our lives whose streak of good luck seems infinite even though they constantly and needlessly hurt others. We watch in awe and dream of schadenfreude that never does come. Do the mills of God grind at all we wonder ? Will the process be done in our life-times ? 

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

 I like how Tokarczuk likens this inequity to angels watching over a person after turning up on the wrong side. That is exactly how it feels to those watching from the outside - it is as if the person is blessed with some divine protection and is therefore invinscible. 

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