Appreciated the feedback from the first post. Thought I would go a bit deeper on this one.

Though the blog world is always filled with surprises, I feel that I have some sense of my audience here. I know that some of you reading were really bothered and did not want to comment for whatever reason ranging from not wanting to get a lengthy debate or lack of time to articulate your thoughts or whatever. Having had this conversation a few times now, I’d like to offer the following parameters.

First, I do believe God is sovereign. I believe in His Divine Foreknowledge. I believe His Omniscience contains every detail.
Second, I do not believe that God is arbitrary and that life is random and incidental (I think it’s much, much more complicated than that).
But Third, I do not believe that God is an All-Mighty Micromanager. I do not believe in Foreordination. And I do not believe He manipulates every detail. But I do believe that in providence and that He intervenes (but it is complicated, unpredictable, and beautifully mysterious; a true reflection of His character).
Fourth, To put it simply, I think God “outsources” a lot to free will, that our lives are dramatically altered by a sin-stained world, and that we can learn beautiful truths about God, and the pains, joys, hardships and triumphs of life.
Fifth, EVEN IF, God has a “reason for everything”, I do not believe our finite minds could systematically understand it, predict it, or figure it out.

I know that does not satisfy some people’s concerns but that’s an adequate start for me.

I do not want to make a strawman out of the Steve Johnson tweet but one of the things that frustrates me the most is the lack of consistency in applying this motto. The energy it would take to find the reason in everything would be endless. Sure, in some sense there is a lesson in everything, if you twist long enough and become satisfied when you feel like being satisfied.

But my problem is when we take something random, “I went to the super-market today to get bananas and ran into “so-and-so”. And I wasn’t going to get bananas but I remembered that they are rich in Potassium and I have always felt depleted in that area and so I went and boy am I glad I did! Because I bumped into “so-and-so” and I had a great conversation and “so-and-so” said, “I’m glad I saw you, I needed that.” (For the record, this is based on a true story. In fact, numerous stories. I’m not kidding.)

I am happy for you and “so-and-so”. But what is the lesson here? For one, it may be to always go to the store on a whim to get whatever is needed or to patrol the aisles for acquaintances (yes, acquaintances; if they were friends you could call them rather than wait to ambush them at Shop Rite). The lesson to another is that God’s favorite fruit is the banana and is most glorified by our consumption of it. And the lesson to me may be you should get a job at the grocery store. What is the lesson here? What did God want you to learn from going to the grocery store? And what happens on the day when you go to the grocery store to pick up bananas and nothing really happens? Are you in sin (banana gluttony)? Are you purchasing the wrong products? Do you exit the store, heave the shopping cart and exclaim, “I buy bananas 24/7 and this is how you do me??”

I submit that sometimes God doesn’t expect you to learn anything from the grocery store outside of living your life in the manner He has called you. As fun as this is for me to write, if I understand people correctly, this is how they live … if they were being consistent with “everything has a reason” motto. While I certainly believe that God wants us to learn, meditate, pray, and seek wisdom, knowledge, growth, virtues, love, etc., I think it’s much more of a macro, broad view of being human then the analyzing of selective minutia of life. To put it more simply, as Christians, if we live seeking to follow Jesus, not only will we find “reason” but find communion with God and with each other.

Primary Audience – Those who believe that there is a “reason for everything”.
Secondary Audience – Buffalo Bills fans. This post may be the best part of your season.

Last Sunday, Buffalo Bills wide receiver, Steven Johnson dropped the game winning pass in a near overtime upset against the mighty Pittsburgh Steelers. Not only is Steven Johnson a highly talented rookie with a bright career in front of him, he is also a player on one of my fantasy teams. If you thought QB Ryan Fitzpatrick was upset, imagine how I felt as a fantasy owner. Sometimes you break loose and score 3TD’s and sometimes you drop “the most important pass of your life”, that’s life in the NFL and the reality of fantasy sports.  Later, he tweeted his hurt.

I am obviously very humored by this and honestly,  I truly felt bad for Steve Johnson and I know how he feels. I worry about officiating a funeral and saying the wrong name or performing a wedding and accidentally use the same message that I used at the funeral and therefore getting all the names wrong. Along with our one year old, this is something that keeps me up at night. But THIRD and most surprising and the reason for this post, I cannot believe the number of people who have told me they could really  relate to Johnson!! I heard one person say, “Yeah, sometimes God does stuff like that.” and another hoped that he would change his mind regarding the tweet “You expect me to learn from this???”

First, God doesn’t care about the NFL. The entire season is anchored by mocking the Sabbath – trust me, He doesn’t care.

But second, Johnson’s tweets and post-game interviews reflect a flawed theology called, “There’s a reason for everything.” I have withheld for years blogging about this motto because it tends to do more damage than good but when people connect with the terrible theology behind dropped football passes, then we should reconsider some long-held assumptions.

I am not sure what Steve Johnson was to learn from his dropped pass. Virtues from failures? He’s an NFL player, he’s been playing football his whole life, I’m sure he’s encountered failure before. Some point to humility. Football fans know he’s a bit cocky and recently received an excessive celebration penalty. I just have a hard time believing that God was up in heaven last week and suddenly decided to shine a cosmic flash light in poor Steve’s eyes or have an angel spray a bit of baby oil on his hands and arms just enough for a pigskin to slip through. And if God really wanted to make a statement, why not zap his jersey and padding off with a blue lightening bolt as he celebrates. I’m telling you if God cared enough to do that, there would never be another profanity uttered on the line of scrimmage. Those 300 pound linemen would be quoting the beatitudes and blessing their opponents in fear of their big butts be aired on network television.

Too many have this “cause and effect” expectation of God. Meaning if they pray or read Scripture or praise him 24/7 then God has to bless. Life is not only filled with missed opportunities, sadly it’s marked by tragedies, and defiled by evil. When we read the Scriptures, we see the righteous destroyed by evil. The same sun that gives us life can sometimes give skin cancer. Even water, that is so essential to our survival, can drown us. It’s not cause and effect. Though I wish it were as simple as “Do good, get good”, there are no guarantees in a flawed world.

So then how do respond to this? The short answer is to trust the Lord who is at work in the redemption of all things. I’ll try to elaborate later this week.
Feel free to comment, disagree, or I dare you, defend Steve Johnson’s tweet ;-).

Our family had a beautiful Thanksgiving this weekend. My sister, brother-in-law and niece flew in from Arizona and we spent the holidays with our parents, cousins and with many of our wonderful relatives. Aside from a possible knee injury sustained at our annual youth group football game, “Turkey Tackle”, (those junior high girls are tough), I couldn’t have asked for a better weekend. I even received encouraging words for the sermon I preached this morning (not sure if/how I will post about it but the feedback is surprising when you preach on the rich young ruler in such an affluent area. I mean that it’s surprising in a good way).

I admit to being pretty sentimental these days. For the most part, things are good. I don’t just mean that things are good because God is good (though that is of course true) but I mean to include circumstantially – things are pretty good. I mentioned in today’s sermon that we have “good problems”. Everyone has problems, among ours are kids that wake up at 4 am and if they don’t, they sleep in til 5. Praise the Lord, they are healthy though that isn’t something we take for granted.

A year ago we had to take our 6 week old Dylan to the ER and he was admitted into the infant ICU. Thankfully, he was only there a week and has been healthy ever since. We have had a couple of ER visits since (two with 2.5 year old), and have grieved the loss of a dear uncle and I have a few family members that I pray for throughout the day. Further, we have close friends and know of many others who are facing financial challenges, seeking employment, and trying to figure out the dynamics of certain relationships. May the Lord give us all grace.

I don’t know anyone that lives a perfect, pain-free life – not one. I would also add that with the explosion of social networking and the new-found access into each other’s lives, again, I know of no pain-free lives. If you factor in round the clock, cable news coverage, twitter alerts, google news, (the only guy I know is that Dos Equis’ “Most Interesting Man in the World”). And so this gives me perspective. In your college years, you’re quite the idealist, in your mid-twenties there is the possibility of getting pretty jaded, now in my thirties, it seems that the two are balancing.

In addition to our little growing family, here are a few things that I am thankful for.
Some dear friends having kids this year – The Hickoks, Currys, and now the Turners. Within a month, 4 more couples that we love are going to have kids – going to be an awesome Christmas.
A couple dear friends getting married – like the Peterhoffs!
Our Sr. High Youth Group had a great mission trip to New Orleans this year and we are off to a great start for the year. I could go on and on but I am really grateful for our leaders, our students and their families.
Grateful that I am making some quality friendships through our Second Mile Gathering.
Our church’s prayerful search for vision. Some important changes need to be made in our hearts, ministries, and methodologies. Grateful that we have the courage and the motivation to address this.
Finishing Seminary – I miss my cohort, miss the required reading in a weird way, miss the brilliant moments in a lecture but so glad I’m done. I’ll go for the Dmin when I really start missing that stuff. (Also loved our ‘Nambodia trip!)
And again, I am grateful that God is there in the moments of pain, tragedy, need and among other places, confusion. Like everyone I hate the difficult days, and I grieve when others go through them (some dear friends and some I only know through things like twitter). I acknowledge that sometimes our attempts to comfort may fall short and sound trite but I am confident that the Lord is near the broken hearted.