Who Broke the Cosmic Dice in Ann Arbor?

Probably, if you are like me (i.e. human) you have wondered how random life can seem at times.  Life does, frequently, seem like it is out of control. Things happen for seemingly no apparent reason. We turn around and ascribe these things to luck or chance. We are trained by secularism to think that life is the product of many purposeless chances.  

Consider what happened this last weekend in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  On the last play of the college football game taking place there, something happened with a player and a football which  to one side seemed to be an occurrence of capricious chance and bad luck.  To the other side it was “lucky” and the product of lots of hard work!  Some of these things with luck really depends on your perspective, doesn’t it!

For example: you are trying to sell your house and the day the inspector comes to examine the house for your buyer there is a thunderstorm.  The storm exposes a leak in your roof that the inspector notices.  How do we explain this event?  Bad luck? Surely your buyer would say that was good luck!

But then, we who are Christians read this:

“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be (Ps 139:16b).”

Chance?  Randomness?  Chaos?  Luck? These words vanish in the light these words bring to our life. Our days, before one of them came to be, where “scripted” before they ever happened.  God is writing a vast cosmic story in which we are the participants and God is the hero.  

As psalm 139 has shown so far, God is omniscient.  He is aware and knows all things past, present, future and all things that could have been.  Hence he knows the best way to the best of all possible destinations.  God is omnipresent, so He is with us and participating in the unfolding of His creation.  And God is omnipotent.  Whatever He intends to do He is able to accomplish. That makes God Sovereign.

God, in His Sovereignty has the right and the power to rule all things after the council of His own will. He has determined to take for Himself a people for His very own. He writes into His script those whom He has chosen to grant His mercy.  He is able to take these whom He has chosen to the place He intends to go: a bright future in eternity.

This means that sometimes the best possible road goes through some rough places, “even through the valley of death’s shadow (Ps 23).”  For me it looks like unemployment is providing the roughness in the road.  For you it might look like cancer or the loss of a close family member.  For someone else it might look like the failure or an accident.  But these things were never a surprise to your heavenly father.  Even your moral failures were included in the script; not to order you to do them, but that he would so work and so do that even in that situation, He would prove to be the hero of your life, and your rescuer and redeemer.  All these things work together to make you more like Jesus, less like a sinner for His glory and our benefit (Romans 8:28).  He “who began that good work will be faithful to complete it!”

I have a friend who has a high view of God’s sovereignty.  But he is also a Michigan Wolverines fan.  Amazingly, he described the end of that game this last weekend as a piece of “luck.”  There is really no such thing as luck. There is only God’s purpose. The real question is “How is God going to use this for my benefit?”  Not “who fixed the dice?”