Random

I gave a book to my daughter Alyssa this past Christmas that I got for myself. I did it on purpose – I was interested in the book and thought my daughter might enjoy it. Beyond that, I thought we could talk about our reactions and reflections on what we read. Last year my son Chad did the same for me – he gave me the space trilogy by C. S. Lewis and for the next four months we talked about it. A highlight of the year for me, and I hope for him as well.

Anyway, I gave this book to Alyssa by Don Miller entitled A Million Miles In A Thousand Years. I had read an earlier book by Miller and thought this one might be interesting though I know Miller is not for everyone. I thought the book might be a good read and good discussion for us.

Alyssa and I do not have much experience reading and talking about books together. A few years ago she urged me to read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s book The Brother’s Karamazov. I trudged through the book with great effort and then called her to talk about it (about four months later, as I recall). Looking back, I don’t think she believed I would read the Russian novel in the first place. When I finished it and wanted to talk about it, she confessed that it had been years since she read it, that she had read it in a hurry, and she didn’t remember the parts I was asking her about. We talked about her skimming the book again (Ha!) and then we would talk about it. That was three or four years ago now. No discussion yet.

Back to Miller’s book – he starts out with a series of random reflections on life, a bit like this blog. He talks about a friend who wrote down every experience he could remember and came up with five hundred pages of memories. Miller confesses that the narrative of his life would not be near so long – in fact, he even wonders what to make of all the experiences of life. They seem so random, some highs and lows and all sorts of things in-between. The question is, what story do they tell? Where is life going with all of these disconnected experiences?

That idea speaks to me because each day can be somewhat random for me. The one sure thing I face each week is the relentless return of the Sabbath with its sermon preparation, but other than that, any given day can be a smorgasbord of unexpected experiences. It can be so random, and most days I don’t mind it at all. I have learned that ministry takes place in those random moments as much or more than the planned moments, and that God speaks at unexpected times in unusual ways. At the same time, I have to admit that there are moments I look back and realize that I can’t get all the random events to hang together – I am not always sure what story they tell. Miller feels the same and hopes that some day in eternity he might tell God about all his experiences and God will let him in on what it all meant.

What a random blog – is there a point? Yes, of course!

I often return to the narrative in Genesis 37-50 about Joseph precisely because his life was so random and unexpected. You remember, as a teenager he had some pretty brazen dreams and he dared boast about them to his brothers. They hated him for it and did their best to destroy his dreams, which they did for a number of years. And then more than twenty years later it all makes sense – he tells his brothers that, though what they did was a random act of violence, God was at work using whatever randomly came into his life to bring him to the place where he, Joseph, could be the savior of his family.

I like Joseph’s story because it makes me realize God really is able to pull together all these seemingly random moments of life, the good and the bad and the in-between, and accomplish something far greater than we might realize. In my better moments I tell God that I am okay with that, that I don’t need to know the story line yet, that I will simply trust Him on the journey.

And then there are those times when I stare at some random moment and say, “Father, what is that about? Where does that fit in?”

Are you going to try and tell me you don’t do the same thing?