Things don't "just happen". Nothing
does. Spell it out and underline: "NOTHING!" For God's
all loving Will underpins every single movement in the Universe.
Words like "accident" or "coincidence" are
not part of God's vocabulary. They are words which come from
a merely human perspective on certain kinds of experience, which
are, in fact, no less under God's control than all the rest.
"Coincidence", it has been said, "is what takes
place when God decides to act anonymously". But God almost
always seems to act anonymously. Only faith, helped on by the
practice of prayer, can open our minds to discern His signature
in the events of life. And when we come, at last, Accidents Don't
Happen!to recognise that He has, in fact, "signed off" on the entirety
of creation and all its movements, words like "accident", "coincidence", "miracle" or "everyday
happenings" will begin to merge as one. Just a varied selection
of loving acts of God!
The existence of evil in our world, the
experiences of pain and suffering and sin, mysterious though
they are to us, cannot
frustrate the all-loving Will of God, who alone creates and orchestrates
the Universe. The words of Jesus are charged with this understanding
of God, the God whom He prefers to call "Heavenly Father".
It is this God who "clothes the wild grass"; without
His say-so "no sparrow falls to the ground". St Paul
assures us that "in all things God works for good".
It is such conviction of faith that enables St Thérèse
to point out that "the only path which leads to the divine
furnace of love is the complete abandonment of a baby sleeping
in his father's arms". There is, I seem to recall, a book
entitled 'Let Go And Let God'. That title expresses the best
advice worth following in life and in all life's circumstances.
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