Fortuna’s Hand?

Wake Up Call

I find myself with a nagging ache for the writer of a memoir I once read. The true story of several interlocking tragedies is told by a wife made famous when she marries into a famous family. One of the tragedies is her husband’s death after too brief a marriage and chance at happiness.

Somehow the wife tries to understand – make sense of senseless tragedy. She settles on an old Roman goddess, Fortuna. It is “Fortune” which arbitrarily dishes out the good to one, the bad to another. But watch out – next week it might be the reverse! After her husband’s death she seeks help in many spiritual places but comes up empty. Now she simply endures and goes on with only a sense that fate visited her.

Is life really either meaningless or directed by a malevolent goddess? Do all those tears and sorrows and heartbreaks count for nothing in the end? NO! But if we want to bring meaning to tragedy in our life we have to ask the right question. The question is not “why did this happen to me” but “how can you redeem it God?”

How about you? You must have some big “why” questions; we almost all do. How are you making sense of what you do not understand about your own life? Job was a man visited by tragedy and God never really explained to him why it had all happened. Still, Job said; “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You” (Job 42:5).

In tragedy, Job met God in an intimate way unknown to him before. How about that to give purpose?

 

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