Serendipity v. Sovereignty
It’s the week your house goes on the market, and suddenly you’re in the hospital with appendicitis (true story—though not mine).
You’re already stuck in bed sick and your newly licensed sixteen year old gets rear ended on the way home from school (another true story—also not mine).
You put in for grocery pick up because your week is scheduled to the gills, and they don’t include half your order, so you have to squeeze in another grocery run (this time with all five kids along) to get the rest of what you need to feed the savages for the week (yep—that one is me).
It’s easy to look at all of these situations, with their varying degrees of intensity, and see how little it would’ve taken for things to go differently, for things to go our version of right.
We want that miracle for ourselves—the miracle of things going well.
We want the serendipity of finding a twenty dollar bill blowing across the empty street or finding our favorite shampoo 50% off the week we run out or receiving a hundred dollar refund check in the mail right after we’ve paid the piano teacher. We want to pray for the energy to get through the morning and have a friend drop by with coffee before we say Amen.
And shouldn’t that be how it goes? God loves us. Doesn’t he want us to be happy?
And we look around and we see other people who seem to be getting the little things that they want. So why aren’t we?
Why is it that the people consistently following God find themselves saying, “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away: blessed be the name of the Lord.” as they bury their dreams and their health and their children?
Why does the rest of the world seemingly get serendipity and we get God’s sovereignty?
The more I sit with this question, the more I wonder if it’s because God cares far less about our temporary happiness and far more about our relational character growth.
{I say this as someone who posts a weekly “Happiness Is…” list, because I think that it’s worthwhile to look for good in the world and to count God’s gifts.}
It’s not that God doesn’t care about our happiness. He created us to enjoy the things that He made. He created us to enjoy Him.
And that’s what I mean by “relational character growth.” God wants us to be the kind of people whose characters have developed to the point where we can enjoy a relationship with Him to the fullest extent. In His infinitely well-informed option, that’s true happiness.
And if we’re always getting the answers we want to the prayers that we ask, soon enough, we’ll be satisfied by the miracle and no longer thirst for the Miracle Giver.
I see in myself, time and time again, the desire for God to just make things easy.
Why does it have to be so hard? we ask. We know God is good, and we know God loves us, so why doesn’t He heal our marriages, our depression, our illnesses, our broken relationships? Aren’t these good things? How can God not want these things for us?
Wouldn’t our answered prayers bring glory to His name?
And if He’s not going to answer these big prayers, can’t He at least answer a couple of our little ones to make up for it? Can’t He find a buyer for the RV who will actually take it or make the Med Group pick up the phone so we don’t have to listen to patriotic hold music for an hour or at least provide a parking space so we can get that one quick errand knocked out before the four year old realizes she’s desperate for lunch?
He could. We know He could. We know He is the sovereign king. We know He is powerful. We know He is Healer. We know He can do more than we could ever ask or imagine. We know.
But often He doesn’t. Because instead He gives us Himself. Often, not in the way we want—a clear voice or a lifting of our spirits or a comforting presence—but sometimes in a way we don’t expect—a friend checking in, a text message from a sister, a furry pet snuggled against us, a flash of brilliant beauty on the horizon.
And maybe that’s the difference I need to see: those things we put on our Happiness lists are not about serendipitous life wins, but the comfort God gives when His sovereignty has told us no.
As I sit with these thoughts, I find myself praying for myself and for the Church…and also for you:
May we desire the Miracle Giver more than the miracle.
May we stop hoping for selfish serendipity when we could find strength in God’s sovereignty.
May we be more invested in growing up into people who can truly enjoy God’s presence than in the temporary happiness we think would prove His love for us.
