The Plan, Part 2

"God has a plan"

How many times have you heard that? Usually--almost always--you hear it when something bad has happened. If you hear it and nod knowingly, chances are something bad has happened to someone else. If you hear it and want to take a tire iron to the person who said it, chances are something bad has happened to you.

And yet, if the suffering is part of something bigger, then it's easier. If God has a plan, there's maybe nobility in suffering. In your suffering, you're furthering God's causes here on Earth. Why me? now has an answer.

I submit that while God probably has at least one plan--probably more than that--your suffering may not be part of the plan. If God has a plan that includes your suffering, that means suffering is not the norm. It's a special circumstance that God has set forth that profoundly advances His cause. And yet, if you believe in the Bible, God clearly indicates in Genesis 3 that life is supposed to be hard. The statement in Genesis is agricultural in its literal meaning. It's no less true of non-agricultural work and interpersonal relationships. If you own a Kia Sportage with more than 60,000 miles on it, it's true of just getting your stupid car started.

In other words, the problems you're having are part of life. If you breathe, you suffer. God is probably not playing a chess game and giving you problems in order to advance your salvation. As the great Dread Pirate Westley once said, "Life is pain. Anyone who says different is selling something."

God's plan, if He has one, is born of our response to what happens, whether good or bad. God's plan is as much forwarded by how you use the big bonus you got as it is by how you react to the terminal illness that someone else might have. Or you might have.

It's with the suffering that we are to pray as if everything depended on God and work as if everything depended on us. Until it's time to stop working. In other words, sometimes the answer to the prayer about removing suffering is "No." Jesus begged God to not go through the crucifixion. And yet it happened. Paul asked three times for God to remove the thorn in his side. God didn't.

Sometimes, the only answer is acceptance. If you've discerned that the problem is God's will, the best way to deal with it is to accept it. When Jesus prayed in the garden to remove this cup from Him, the last phrase was "yet not my will, but your will be done." Paul accepted the answer that the thorn wouldn't be removed. Battling against something that's intractable is counterproductive and only leads to strife and bitterness.

As long as I'm reaching to Lost for the meaning of life, I'll also reach to it for the meaning of acceptance and maybe even death. One of the characters, Bernard, is 57 years old and has never found true love. And yet he finds it in a woman named Rose. For him, she is like drinking from a cool spring after wandering all his life in the desert. And then she lets him know that she's dying. But even if he only gets to drink from the cool spring for a few months more, it's better than walking away from it, so he says he doesn't care and he wants to marry her.

In the story, this is not Rose's first battle with whatever it is that's killing her. But she seems to be tired of the battle. Bernard, of course, isn't. He takes her to a faith healer in Australia. On their honeymoon. When she finds out, she's furious with him.

"I didn't want this," she screams at him in a Jeep in the middle of the outback. She's made her peace with it. She knows that she's going to die and she's chosen to face it head on. She's tired of the battle and wants to live out her remaining days at peace. Bernard's desparate need to do something is robbing her of that peace.

Sometimes, it's time to stop fighting and accept. Life is hard. It's promised to us. Sometimes it's worth the fight, and sometimes the path to peace is acceptance. That's the real plan. The deeper meaning isn't in the suffering. It's not in the strained marriage or the car that won't start or the seemingly endless struggle to find a job. Or in watching someone you live die slowly from within.
It's in the response. It's the discerning what's appropriate and in fighting what can be fought, and accepting what cannot. And though that may be God's plan, we have to figure it out and execute it. And the figuring out is an ongoing, humbling experience that will sap your energy and drive you to your knees.

Because life will be hard; He said so. The living comes when you decide what to do after accepting that premise. In what you do after acceptance, is God's plan played out.