theirs not to reason why

(my StrengthsFinder personality profile)

We all want reasons for why things happen. We want to believe there's a reason for everything. That God brought us here so we could meet this person and this person would introduce us to this job which would help us gain this experience so that, eventually, we end up exactly where we're supposed to be, saving the world.

It's easier to deal with the things that happen, especially when they're bad, if we believe they're leading us to some ultimate, better destination.

But last night my friend Micah said something really profound. "Sometimes," he said, "things just happen."

Lots of people, including myself, have given me possible explanations for all the tough stuff in the past year. "Maybe God's taking ______ away to give you ______." "Maybe God knows that you're too ______, and He wants to make you more ______." "Maybe ______ will prepare you for ______."

Somehow we feel that, if we just know why, or at least know that there's a reason, we can trust God easier. It makes Him seem more sovereign or something, to know that everything is a part of His plan. It makes Him seem more faithful if we can point to why we went through what we went through.

But you know what I have discovered? It doesn't matter. Sometimes things just happen. Maybe they're the result of your own decisions, or the result of someone else's decisions, or the result of weather or the economy or bears. The point is, I think God's plan for us is a lot broader than we're comfortable with. And even though He daily carries us in His arms, I think He is less concerned with all the tiny decisions that consume our lives, and more concerned with whether we're loving Him, serving Him, and desiring Him above all else in all the decisions that we do make.

Sometimes God has very specific plans for certain parts of our lives, and sometimes He doesn't. He is still sovereign, He is still trustworthy, He is still faithful, even when we don't seem to hear Him leading or directing in any particular direction. And just because God has a plan doesn't mean that everything that happens is the perfect piece to fit into the next stage of our puzzly lives. It just means that God is really good at molding, shaping, and sculpting the things that do happen in our lives into the beautiful masterpiece He intends it to be. 

God has made everything fit beautifully in its appropriate time. - Ecclesiastes 3:11 NET