Several weeks ago, at a social gathering, a 20-something man who had just found out that I was a pastor asked me this question:

Yes or No: Do you believe that everything happens for a reason?

I wanted to give a longer explanation. But I was pressed to choose answer A or B, ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ No other answer would be accepted. “If I’m pushed to answer,” I said, “than the answer is no.” I think I surprised him. Shouldn’t a pastor think that everything that happens is due to the will of God and therefore there is a reason?

I don’t think so. I don’t believe that “All the world’s a stage, /And all the men and women merely players” (William Shakespeare As You Like It). I don’t believe that we are just actors at the beck and call of a divine director playing a part that was written for us. We are not the puppets of God.

To put is succinctly: Stuff happens. In the words of a youth: Life is random.

A friend of mine died yesterday. She had a brain tumor. She only knew about it for a week or so. She was too young, too important to too many, too good. She was, in the words of one who knew her much better than I, a personification of love - it just flowed from her so naturally. She lived a life that shared the love of God with the people she came into contact with - and she never had to say a word about her faith. Her faith was who she was.

If I believed that everything happened for a reason, I’d have to believe that God gave her that tumor. I don’t. Instead, I think the tumor happened. It is one of those things that occurs because we live in a broken world.

So where is God?

My image of God is not of a computer programmer playing Sim Life with the real world. I believe that God is active in our world, but instead of believing that God directs all of life, I believe God walks with us. Through our joy, pain, and even the mundane we are never alone. God is with us.

Jesus cried by the grave of Lazarus, his friend. He cried over Jerusalem thinking about the pain the city had gone through and was going to go through. And so I believe that God is grieving with us today over the death of our friend.

God doesn’t make bad stuff happen - that’s just not in his nature. He isn’t in the business of bringing pain to those he loves (which is all of us, by the way). God’s work is to redeem the difficult stuff in our lives so “that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good” (Romans 8:28, Msg, italics mine). That doesn’t mean everything is good, but God can turn it into something good. Or as the Bible says in another place, “thank God no matter what happens” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, Msg) not thank God for whatever happens. Do I always get to see the good? No. But I believe that it is there.

My faith comforts me today in knowing that God was with my friend through her ordeal. I also choose to believe in her particular case that God’s grace was manifest in the fact that she didn’t suffer long. That would have been so hard on her.

Did it happen for a reason? Was it the will of God? I have trouble saying yes to either of those questions. But do I think that God will do something with this, and already has? ABSOLUTELY!

Thanks be to God. Even today!