Life's Purpose and the Third Sunday of Advent

Gaudete Sunday, the pink candle, and the call to rejoice.  The Introit for the day is partly from Philippians, "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Indeed, the Lord is near."  I have to confess that Kathy and I tarried a little in getting ready for Advent, and so our candle for this week is white, not pink (they were out of them at the store).  Oh well!.  Anyway, our church's candle is pink and we dutifully lit it this morning and something in what the pastor said got me asking this question, "Do I believe that each life has a divine purpose and plan?"  Said another way, do I believe that God creates us and our life for a specific purpose in His plan, and that He then ordains every detail of what evangelicals call "His perfect will" for us?  Things like who we will marry (evangelicals, especially young evangelicals, are always very concerned about that), where we will go to school, what we will do for an occupation, what our gifting and ministry is going to be in the kingdom, and so on.  Now I must admit I have seen the hand of God openly active in my family's life at times in the past.  But I also have to admit that it is not a routine, day-in and day-out occurrence.  Sometimes it's my hand more than his that rules the day.  And that got me to thinking of other alternative schemes that God may use for life than the whole perfect will route.  Perhaps He simply gives life to us and imbues it with full potential, and then allows us to choose, to live, to fail, to succeed, to journey...to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.  I am reading a book on this great debate about how the sovereignty of God interfaces with the concept of free will and choice, how predestination really plays out in our world and I confess it makes a compelling case for this model.

So ridiculous concepts pop into my head this morning including such notions that God has preordained my wardrobe for my entire life, what tie I will wear today and so on.  Ridiculous, I know, but somehow truth pushed to extreme always ends up in those corners or my understanding.  But more seriously I was forced to face other issues such as does God create babies that die prematurely, or men and women born into slavery or subjected to poverty or crippled by disease.  And it's at that point that the pat answers that used to serve me well seem to stick in my mouth and I have to say, I don't know.  I don't always understand  the way things work out in life and sometimes I don't always feel like "rejoicing", even when the candle is pink instead of purple.  But on this Third Sunday of Advent, my hope remains that the Lord indeed is near, because He is the only one that can bring sense out of the muddle that I continually find myself in.