Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

by Kate Bowler

“Everything happens for a reason” or “God is writing a better story.” Apparently God is also busy going around closing doors and opening windows. He can’t get enough of that.

would be nice if catastrophes were divine conspiracies to undo what time and unfaithfulness had done to my wandering soul.

Fairness is one of the most compelling claims of the American Dream, a vision of success propelled by hard work, determination, and maybe the occasional pair of bootstraps.

What would it mean for Christians to give up that little piece of the American Dream that says, “You are limitless”? Everything is not possible. The mighty Kingdom of God is not yet here. What if rich did not have to mean wealthy, and whole did not have to mean healed? What if being people of “the gospel”

meant that we are simply people with good news? God is here. We are loved. It is enough.

We have words to evaluate how likely it is that our attempts to harness the supernatural are of any use. Black cats and ladders and spilling the salt are put in a box dubbed superstition, and failed prophecies are classified as fantasies or delusions. But the prosperity gospel asks you to set aside your doubts and bet it all on God’s supernatural power to reach down and remake the world according to your prayer.

These are my best hopes for you, that you press forward at last. I don’t know how to die, but I know how to press this crushing grief into hope, hope for them. It doesn’t sound much like goodbye. It sounds more like this:

Fare thee well, my loves. —

used to think that grief was about looking backward, old men saddled with regrets or young ones pondering should-haves. I see now that it is about eyes squinting through tears into an unbearable future. The world cannot be remade by the sheer force of love. A brutal world demands capitulation to what seems impossible—separation. Brokenness. An end without an ending.

Control is a drug, and we are all hooked, whether or not we believe in the prosperity gospel’s assurance that we can master the future with our words and attitudes.

have known Christ in so many good times,” she said, sincerely and directly. “And now I will know Him better in His sufferings.”

Yes, yes, yes. Yet will I trust in Him. I don’t know what the word “trust” means anymore, except there are moments when I realize that it feels a lot like love.

I know where Palm Sunday falls in the story of our God. Jesus is on a donkey trudging into Jerusalem, people waving their arms in the air, tattered coats thrown down before the One who marches toward His death. It is a celebration. It is a funeral procession.

When the feelings recede like the tides, they said, they will leave an imprint. I would somehow be marked by the presence of an unbidden God.

God may be universal, but I am not.

If I were to invent a sin to describe what that was—for how I lived—I would not say it was simply that I didn’t stop to smell the roses. It was the sin of arrogance, of becoming impervious to life itself. I failed

to love what was present and decided to love what was possible instead. I must learn to live in ordinary time, but I don’t know how.

“Don’t skip to the end,” he said, gently. “Don’t skip to the end.”

am living in Ordinary Time.