Chance or Design
“Is life a series of random choices, or is it predetermined?”
This was a Twitter post promoting a book by Taylor Jenkins Reid entitled “Maybe in Another Life.”* The fictional story is about a woman who makes an innocuous choice between departing a bar with her roommate or staying and later hitching a ride home with an old high-school boyfriend. 
In tandem the book tells what happens with each alternate choice. The author challenges the reader to think about questions of fate and whether life dictates chance or design but more importantly she begs the answer to: Is love a possible outcome in either choice?
I haven’t yet read the book (I’m on the library’s holding list) but maybe random or pre-determined life choices are a bit of both. Lives not so much fated to the inevitable or kidnapped by chance as bound together by an invisible thread and assigned a subtle connection: the potential molding of either outcome. In any circumstance we have choice to allow the free flow of God’s grace and therein lay unfathomable potential. We may control nothing else, but this we can choose or deny.
But when near action and things are happening it’s hard to gain perspective. Like the young woman who can’t see the machinations of a calculating and manipulative boyfriend. So consumed by the thoughts and emotions churned by the minutia of their frequent problems she can’t begin to entertain doubts raised by family as to the relationship suitability. Already battling in an underground war she doesn’t recognize all energy gets focused on rebutting the scrutiny and criticisms levied at her choices and actions. 
He twists things and argues she is an unworthy girlfriend. To shore up his insecurity he convinces her no one else will find her attractive and no one but he will ever want her.
A Broader View of Random or Pre-Determined Choices
It is often difficult to see the connections arising from our choices, to see them as part of a larger design whether for good or bad. Time and distance allow for a broader view. As with the young woman when she finally stepped back from her boyfriend and saw the unhealthy pattern and contrived design in his behaviours. In the space she created for herself God breathed on her consciousness and showed her truths she did not see before. Unlike her own experience she noticed none of the control issues in the boyfriend-girlfriend relationships of her peers. Instead she saw trust and freedom. This kind of love was new.
So, is life a series of random choices or is it pre-determined?
In the end whether we turn left or right God meets us at the corner of our lives. There is no right or wrong direction, just better or worse, but never fixed, unchangeable or a dead-end. Always malleable it is God’s presence which is the invisible thread that weaves through the random or the pre-determined, God’s spirit giving rise to an unanticipated design where love is possible in all choices.
To be continued (refer next post).
Life as chance or life as design… where do you stand?
*https://www.amazon.ca/Maybe-Another-Life-Taylor-Jenkins-ebook/
NOTE: Dear Reader, at the start of Lent I indicated during this period blog posts would be published once a week, a change from the previous practice of two posts per week (Wednesday/Sunday). From my perspective I find the pace offers a better writing balance so, for now, I will continue to post weekly on Sundays.