I have heard it more times than I can count, “All things happen for a reason.” The statement implies that all things in our life are preordered for us by God. It makes God the cause of evil things, like ordering a dump truck to run over your child or arranging the overdose or suicide of your son or daughter. Some think God has a bag of tricks that He chooses, permits or selects just for us. In this bag is cancer, heart attack, divorce, an affair, a suicide, a murder, a car wreck, a kidnapped child for human trafficking, and we can come up with a thousand more. This is so contrary to the God revealed in Christ. God never acts in unloving ways toward us. There is no rhyme or reason to the melee of random evil rampant in our fallen world. However, there is a way through. It is suffering-love. It is endurance. It is struggling to maintain sanity. It is crying until you have become one with your weeping Lord, whose tears have already made Him one with us. This becomes “the reason”. There is nothing remotely easy about it.
“Jesus wept” Jn 11:35
