Ukrainian Orthodox League Bulletin - October, 2003 - Trusting in God

One of the most important questions we can ever ask ourselves, “does life have meaning over and above our own designs?” Does life have purpose beyond our own making? How we answer these questions has significant ramifications for our happiness and peace of mind. Is there a divine blueprint for how life unfolds or are we just random players in a blind universe where everything happens by chance?

The prophet Micah in the Old Testament believed in a grand design. He announces that God has great plans for the little town of Bethlehem that will have wondrous implications even to the end of the earth; “But you (Bethlehem) Ephrathah, the lease of the clans of Judah, from you will come for me a future ruler of Israel . . . He will take his stand and he will shepherd them with the power of Yahweh”. (Mi. 5:2-5) In the New Testament, the author of the book of Hebrews assumes that God has great designs for the world in Jesus Christ and encourages our participation in those designs by submission to God’s will: “You wanted no sacrifice or cereal offering, but you gave me a body. You took no pleasure in burnt offering or sacrifice for sin; then I said: ‘Here I am, I am coming’, in the scroll of the book it is written of me, to do your will, God”. (Hebrews 10:5-7) Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, proclaims the Mother of God is “blessed” because of her trust in the fulfillment of God’s plans for her: “Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled”. (Luke l:45)

. . . there are times when this belief is severely challenged.
Believing in a “great plan” or divine providence is not always easy to do. There are times when we are in love, or when everything is going our way, and we feel that all’s well in God’s world. We may look up unto the clear skies on a romantic evening and the dazzle of stars reinforces our belief that, “there must be something behind all of this”. But there are other times when this belief is severely challenged. Infants die of genetic disorders; children perish in floods or from famine. Innocent bystanders are gunned down by a madman; thousands perish in a terrorist attack and calamities befall the most undeserving. We get sick for no reason, lose a job without cause, watch a loved one pine away and die in the prime of life. Life can become so filled up with confusion and problems that all we see is chaos.

And yet out Orthodox faith and Sacred Scripture assure us that there is a grand design and God lovingly cares for each one of us. The problem is we don’t want to accept “the big picture in its entirety. We don’t want to believe that God’s will embraces the bad with the good, that everything that happens is part of God’s plan, whether we understand how that can be or not.

Our joy in life is increased the more we accept God’s will in its fullness.
If we accept God’s will, however, we need to accept it wholly, without breaking it into pieces according to our particular demands and expectations. We gain great peace of mind and serenity when we embrace the belief that there is a divine blueprint for the universe that is good, loving, true and perfect. “Authentic Christian living is empowered by a belief that we are part of a “big picture,” that there is a purpose and fulfillment for each of us in the grand scheme of things. With the Holy Theotokos we are “blessed” in our trust of that fulfillment. Our joy in life is increased the more we accept God’s will in its fullness. This means that we accept both the sweet and the sour of life as part of God’s plan, that even tragedy has its purpose even when it is not presently clear to us what the purpose might be.