Finally, two Garland policemen were able to catch up and pull the driver over.  The 911 operator asked me to stop as well so the policemen could take my statement.  Until now, I’m feeling like the good citizen.  You know, I’ve done my duty keeping this person off the road who obviously had no regard for anyone’s life, not even his own.  It’s not so much that I meant to be judgmental; it just comes so naturally.  But, when the policemen finally got the driver to step out of his car, that’s when my heart sank.  He couldn’t have been more than twenty.  Suddenly, all of my preconceived judgments and attitudes about drunk drivers turned to deep sadness.  What is it that could make such a young man, with his whole life in front of him, need to get drunk at 6:00 in the morning?  What is it that makes anyone of any age need to chemically lubricate their emotions any time of the day?

Nonetheless, as the policemen administered the roadside sobriety test it appeared to me, sitting at a comfortable and safe distance, that this guy was more than loaded.  After a while, one of the policemen walked to my car to get my statement and I couldn’t help but ask.  “Was he drunk?”  “No,” the officer said, “apparently he is just very tired.  He’d been moving all night long and he was just trying to get to work.”  My already sad emotions now turned to shame.  How many times do we sit at a comfortable and safe distance and judge others when, in fact, if we’d known the whole story, our judgment might have turned to compassion?  Maybe he shouldn’t have been on the road.  But, there was more to the story than met the eye. 

Moral of the story:  It is not ours to judge until we know the whole story, which means that it is never ours to judge because – we will never know the whole story about anyone else’s life, many times, not even our own.  But, judge we do.  Even if, in sometimes very subtle and seemingly spiritual ways, we draw conclusions about what we see happening around us and pronounce judgment as to why it happened. 

Two weeks ago we began a brief series entitled, “Promises God Never Made.”  We’ve talked about the promise God never made that, “God helps those who help themselves.”  Last week, we talked about the promise God never made, though we often make it to ourselves and others, that “God will never give us more than we can handle.”  This week, the third promise we will discuss, the promise that God never made, is that “All things happen for a reason.”  Really?

Before we go any further, it is important to acknowledge that logic demands that we agree.  All things do happen for some reason.  Every cause has an effect and, conversely, every effect has a cause.  Like this past week when I decided to switch cell phone services.  I’m still on what is feeling like a never-ending journey through that place I’m supposed to preach against.  I can’t believe how complicated this has become!  I have spent an embarrassing number of hours on hold just trying to make my life less expensive and complicated at the expense of my mental health.  That’s the effect.  The cause was my decision to just not leave well enough alone.  How I wish I had! 

Every effect has a cause.  It is just that, when we say, “all things happen for a reason,” we are often trying to make logical sense of our often confusing world or comfort others by reassuring them that even the most bizarre occurrences are the result of some greater cosmic, if not divine, scheme in which we are only minor players. 

Yet, there is a real danger in assigning direct responsibility for all that happens to the direct will of God.  Are we sure we want to do that?  How would that work, say, if we were trying to offer comfort to a mother in a third world country who was holding her starving child in her arms?  Would it really comfort or help her in any way by trying to reassure her in the middle of any mother’s worst nightmare that “all things happen for a reason?” 

There are other possibilities, aren’t there?  We do live in a fallen world.  A world in which sin still has a say.  A world in which our choice to live in sinful rebellion against God will have its affects until God ultimately redeems his creation.  Sometimes, the effects of our sinful causes can be horrific.

I’m working right now with a young mother whose husband has finally left, after she threatened a restraining order.  They live in an upscale north Dallas community.  A reminder to me that, behind closed doors, there are stories none of us will ever know about what goes on in each others private lives despite what we see on this side of those closed doors.  Despite appearances, she has honestly feared at times for her ability to feed her two year old daughter.  All of this despite the fact that her husband always has plenty of money for new clothes, finely coiffed hair and expensive dinners to keep his clients fooled with appearances.  Spousal abuse and child abuse take many forms.  Should I try to comfort her by simply reassuring her that “all things happen for a reason” and thereby imply that God is responsible for her husband’s sinful irresponsibility?  Would you?  Do we really want to assign to God the final responsibility for every single event in human experience?  What would that make God?  What would that make us?

Are we just pieces in a cosmic chess game moved around at the will of some force beyond us?  Or, does the Bible reveal that the God who created us wants to live in intimate relationship with his creation – helping us to find another way?  Every cause will have an effect.  We cannot continue to make bad choices and then be angry at God for the way our lives turn out.

Which is why we need what we sometimes so flippantly call “salvation.”  We don’t need a salvation that insulates us from living in a fallen world.  That kind of salvation could provide that kind of insulation only if it did so by also removing from us the possibilities of joy and hope that come at the risk of loss and brokenness.  We need salvation so that our lives will be in alignment with a loving God who has pledged to give our lives an ultimately good and hopeful purpose no matter what happens.

Which brings us to what I think of as the cornerstone of my understanding of God’s greater purpose for my life, the eighth chapter of Romans.  “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.  For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.  And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.  What then are we to say about these things?  If God is for us, who is against us?  He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?  Who will bring any charge against God's elect?  It is God who justifies.  Who is to condemn?  It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.  Who will separate us from the love of Christ?  Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered."  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

That scripture does not promise us, thanks be to God, that all things that happen are God’s will.  It does promise that, for those who place their faith and trust in Christ, God will work in and through and with everything that ever happens to us, whether we ever know the reason for it, to bring about his purpose for us all along, which is to make us a part of his family from which we can never, ever be separated, no matter what happens and in which we will come to know the fullest possibilities for our existence.  God’s love will have its way with us.  God’s loving will will be done.

A couple of weeks ago, Elaine Gilmer called me and asked if I’d help with a funeral for a homeless person.  She also wanted to know if the memorial service could be held in our chapel and what the expense would be, even though this person had not been a member of our church.  I reassured her that we don’t charge for funerals and agreed to help.  I had no idea what story I was about to share in. 

The funeral was for a woman not that much older than me, Valdi Wilcox.  Valdi grew up here in Oak Cliff and graduated from Adamson High School, just across the street, in 1966.  Valdi’s parents had been well known and highly respected pharmacists here in our community for many years.  Some years ago, Valdi’s parents died and, not long after that, Valdi’s life took a turn down that sad and very mysterious road toward mental illness.  A road from which she was never able to return again.  Not long after that, Valdi either cut off or lost contact with virtually all of her family and her friends and, just about five years ago after she had exhausted all of her resources, she became homeless.  Next time we see a homeless person, it might do us good to remember Valdi.  There is always more to every person’s story than what we are able to see at a safe and comfortable distance as we only watch them pass by on the street.  There’s certainly more to this story.

Valdi was once a very successful student and had lots of friends.  I saw the pictures of slumber parties, twirling teams and even of the one in her annual where she was elected as most popular girl at Adamson her senior year.  She was beautiful.  She was one of those girls who never lacked for boyfriends or dates.  After high school, she went on to Trinity University and earned a degree in professional counseling.  Then, somewhere along the way to somewhere else, she entered into a darkness that only those who have experienced it or who have lived with someone who has could come close to understanding.  A terrible, unrelenting, insidious darkness.  A darkness that finally ended on June 5 in an abandoned downtown restaurant on Maple Avenue, not far from where she grew up and graduated with honors, when Valdi took a gun and ended her life.  All things happen for a reason?

I had agreed to do this memorial service for Elaine.  I suddenly found myself caught up in the emotion more than I ever dreamed possible.  Valdi graduated in 1966, about the time my mother entered her own insidious darkness.  Back then they called it a nervous breakdown.  Now, we’d call it clinical depression.  All I know is that it was wicked.  And, we never, ever told anyone about what went on behind our closed doors.  You know, family secrets, right?  From my middle school years until well into my young adult years, I watched my mother stumble along zombie-like trying to find her way under the affect of drugs that caused her to all but withdraw from reality. 

As I sat there and saw Valdi’s pictures on the altar beside her ashes, pictures with her in the same hairdo I remembered my mother wearing, tears filled my eyes and, for a moment, I entered into that dark world with her.  When it was my turn at the pulpit, I started by saying this.  I have chosen to believe two things.  One is that is it never my right to ever judge another human being, no matter what.  Because, no matter what I see, there is a story beyond what I can see that I will never know.  How Valdi’s life ended is not her whole life’s story.  My guess is that, thirty-eight years ago, when Valdi was walking across the platform at Adamson receiving rewards for all of her achievements, she would have never imagined that someday, after a lonely death in an abandoned restaurant, her ashes would lie on the altar of that church just across the street.  Only God has the right to judge because only God knows the whole story.  Which makes his choice to send his son to save the world, not condemn it, all the more remarkable, wouldn’t you agree? 

The second thing I have learned is that I am more optimistic than ever about the outcome of God’s creation, specifically because God sent his son to save the world, not condemn it (John 3:17).  Sure, I could write fifteen or twenty novels about how God is licking his chops at the thought of destroying his good creation while rivers of blood flow as judgment has its way.  I could make lots of money helping people rejoice at how God will someday deal with wickedness, as though he has not already dealt with it on the cross.  But, I believe that God’s will will be done.  His loving, purposeful, gracious, redemptive will.  His will that will cause all things to work together for what he has determined is ultimately good.  So, now, even when I discuss the judgment of God, I can do so only by thinking of his judgment as the ultimate expression of his love.  It is not mine to understand; it is only mine to trust.  So, I embrace the mystery of God’s love by faith and I don’t try to reassure others who still live in a sinful, broken, fallen world that their misery is because all things happen for a reason, if by that, I mean the reason to be God’s coldhearted indifference to their suffering.

Just a few weeks before she lost her place in a shelter and became homeless once again, Valdi called her counselor at Victim’s Outreach and told her that she had read something in scripture that had really helped.  It was this passage from Psalm 46.  “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.  There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.  God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.  Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts.  The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.  Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth.  He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire.  ‘Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.’  The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress (NIV).”

It is not mine to understand why all things happen.  It is only mine to trust the God who will have his good way no matter what happens.  We cannot know the reason why all things happen.  We can know that God will give purpose to our lives no matter what happens, even if that means reshaping our worst choices to be used as instruments in his hands to achieve his greater good purpose for us.  All things happen for a reason?  I’d rather say, all things work together for good, for those who choose to let God have his way.  That is what it means to be saved.  To believe in the God who wants you to be part of his family, and to trust his ultimately good purposes for you. 

That’s why I keep sharing this blessing with you.  The words are John Claypool’s.  I give them to you often because I believe them and I hope you will, too.  “Go now and remember that in his goodness you were born into this world.  In his mercy you have been kept even until this hour.  And, in his love, fully revealed in the face of Jesus, you are being redeemed.”

Thanks be to God!  Thanks to be our good and loving God!