ALL IN GOD’S PLAN? Romans 9:28 For the Lord will carry out his plan decisively, bringing it to completion on the earth." As the saying goes, he has a plan for every one of us. There are certain parts of the Christian faith that most twenty first century brains find difficult to accept like the four horsemen of the apocalypse or how men who were many centuries old fathered children, let alone how their wives conceived and gave birth; or, how Moses parted an entire sea or how every animal on earth fit into a boat that Noah built because God unveiled his plan for a global flood and the annihilation of all life on earth. These sorts of things are big pills to swallow for our evolving intellect and questioning anything Christian, particularly God, digs up feelings of guilt and shame so we are sort of discouraged from pursuing our faith challenges. But we can’t help it. Questioning all things in life is a part of our brilliance on this planet and, it is a great human light that has served the earth well including Christian evolutionary history. Just look back five hundred years at Martin Luther’s challenge to the Catholic church about forgiveness that ended up creating a new branch of worship called Lutheranism that evolved into Protestantism, ice bergs that broke free from the Vatican and changed the faith significantly and forever. So, challenging our faith is nothing new. In fact, it has proven helpful in solidifying and growing the numbers of the faithful worldwide. Change helped spread the word. Well, like Martin Luther and the vast majority of Christians, I have challenges to the faith and one of them is God’s plan for all of us. For so many reasons my big twenty first century brain just cannot seem to wholly accept the notion that God has a plan for all of the 7.5 billion souls on this earth. It is hard to truthfully and completely accept that he has mapped out every aspect of our lives from birth to death, and after that if you think about it. If he does have such plans then I have even more challenges for him. Here’s why. Over the past few weeks my family has experienced a serious situation with a stalker and his frightful pursuit of a family member. The man is mentally ill and poses a significant physical threat and has had a recent history of committals in mental hospitals to try and get control of his illness that has worsened exponentially the past couple of weeks and just last week landed him once again in a hospital where he is awaiting treatment under armed guard. There are two areas of concern here: my family member’s safety and quality of life; the stalker’s safety, quality of life and his suffering from a very serious psychosis. How does all this fit into my faith challenges? Well, if God indeed does have a plan for us all then he has planned for my family member to endure the fear and danger of having a mentally ill man stalk her; heaven forbid having to experience God’s plan of actual physical harm if she were to be hurt in any way. It could also be considered God’s plan for this man to become mentally ill, unable to function in society, spend his life in delusional and criminal behavior, a life of arrest and incarceration and hospitalization. I just cannot see a loving God with the great power of planning the lives of what he refers to as his “children” making such plan’s for my family member and her stalker. It is counter intuitive of all that I have come to believe about God. And when I think this way my mind drifts to places like Africa where at this very moment an infant is taking its last breath having starved to death and I ask myself if that was God’s plan for that defenseless, innocent child. I think about refugees being gassed in Syria, of victims of the holocaust, rape victims, of the father driving home right this very minute trying to figure out how he is going to pay the bills because he was just laid off at work. There are billions of such stories that my mind cannot ignore that force me to reconsider the role that God may play in the future of our lives. Is God here to plan our lives or is he here to step in and help in the execution of our own plans for our lives? Sometimes God leads us to a cliff’s edge. Sometimes we land in situations that dumbfound our senses and we question God’s thinking but we follow along and try to convince ourselves that these are God’s plans and he knows best so we just acquiesce and say, “Ok, Lord…. So, what now – where to from here?” And we carry on without truly getting any answers other than, “keep the faith.” And we feel anxious because we want real human answers but are afraid to pursue them and we feel guilty for challenging our beliefs which is more natural for the human mind than it is to not challenge them. And, after all, God gave us these constantly evolving brains that just love to challenge things and that is never going to change. Currently, when the challenge hits me, I ask my questions, analyze circumstances and try to accept that perhaps even the worst of events just may fit into some grand divine master plan that is far beyond my brain’s capacity to comprehend. After all we are talking about God here. But after the dust blows away and the next event comes along the same old challenges rise and the same old questions are asked and the same old procedure is put into play and I simply shrug it off and, ….. keep the faith. But there are some times when I just can’t shrug it off and focus on suppressing my questions and maintaining blind faith. Like today, with a madman in a hospital room that was stalking my family member and tossing our entire family into twenty four hour, around the clock fear. I would like to know how and why that is in our life plans; in our best interests. So, here I am now writing this blog on God’s planning assuming that this blog, too, is a part of his plan and that the stalker and the starving child and the holocaust victims and the jobless Dad are all part of his plans as well – for what end, I’ll be damned if I can figure that out. So, God, ……what now? Comments are closed.
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