Do you believe in fate or destiny? Do you believe that we are all destined or fated to end up exactly who and where we were meant to be in the end? How about God’s plan? Do you believe in God’s plan for your life?

Call it fate or call it destiny, it’s all God’s plan. The nonbeliever will scoff at the idea of a god orchestrating their life. Once I would have been right with them. Someone saying there’s a God who cares would have mead me laugh. What kind of fool believes in anything that puts a man on his knees? Gods have existed in one form or another during the entire course of history. No one can show a picture of God. No one can show proof that God exists. There’s no tour bus that drives past the pearly gates daily, well, at least not with anyone that will be returning to share what they have seen.
 
When the dice fall, we like to call I fate or destiny. We don’t like to give credit to God. Good or bad, whatever happens is all part of His plan. There is nothing in life that happens just because. Every single event in life serves a greater purpose. In the end we can’t escape our fate, or destiny, or God’s plan, whichever you choose to call it.

Half the time we aren’t even paying attention as we go through life. God shows up and we chalk it up to something else. Something good happens and we call it good luck or say the stars were in our favor. And let’s not talk about the bad because when it comes to the bad, we live to blame God. A tragedy happens and the first thing we ask is, “where was God?” and its not just the nonbelievers that ask that; we do it as believers too. Where was God? Well, it could be that he was right there, we just missed it. We were so focused on other things we missed his presence.

I had one of those weeks where life goes from bad to worse – you know the one I’m talking about. You ask the universe what else it can possibly throw at you because what could possibly be left. You’ve given up on telling God to just keep throwing things at you, just move on to telling the universe to bring it. By mid week you are pleading that if there really is a Gpd hell put a stop to the mounting trouble that is threatening to crush you. And then, when the troubles mounting in your life keep stacking up, you decide that if there is a God, he’s forsaken you.

Then through a hospital room window you see a rainbow. I’m not talking the kind of rainbow that comes after a rainstorm. I’m talking the kind of rainbow sitting on two white cotton clouds on a trailer hitched to the back of a truck that was part of a Pride parade the day before. However, from the hospital room all you can see is the rainbow and the clouds. It’s rested on, and it reminds you of God’s promise to Noah in the beginning, and in Revelation where he tells you that there will be a rainbow in the end. There’s that part of you that sees it but doesn’t grasp that its God being there. Jesus is the author and finisher, the rainbow in the beginning and the end. And it starts to sink in. You know out of the three of you in the room only two of you are leaving with your life. Its full circle. There is always a beginning and an end.

But you’re so focused, you put the rainbow off. Its only a float. Right? Its not like od put it there. Or did he? What are the odds of a rainbow being visible in the middle of downtown with high rises? Slim, unless the rainbow shows up in another form like a float parked behind a pickup. Maybe its God. Maybe.

When the dove shows up the next day it makes you question your sanity. Never in the heart of a big city have you ever seen a dove. Pigeons for says, dure. A dove? No. That white bird is sitting perched on the tree branch right outside the hospital room where your loved one is dying, staring at you. The float you can explain away. How do you explain away the dove? The dove isn’t confused; it isn’t lost. It has found itself a nice branch to rest on while it stares you down. If you weren’t a sane adult, you might think it was waiting for you to acknowledge its presence. Behind that dove settled on the tree branch you can see the rainbow. How do you explain away both?

The dove, the rainbow leaves a lot of room for thought. While you’ve been bitter about the fact that you are in your current situation, God has been with you, telling you that he’s got you. He has the situation. Your current circumstance was part and is part of his plan. While it admittedly isn’t the best of circumstances’, he never left.

While all of this was happening, I questioned my faith. I had walked away from God. I had walked away from it all for a very long time. Why had I gone back? All that ever seemed to happen was bad things. One bad circumstance after another. My mother found comfort in my faith and the things that it noticed, the rainbow, the dove, God’s promise. But why had I gone back o my faith? I realized that I came back to God because there was nothing else. There was only God. There are four simple words to sum it up. “Thy will be done”.

I didn’t walk back into my faith with that mindset. I started out going to bible study after my sister was murdered, because it was somewhere to be - and I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t go to bible study at first to learn about God and create a relationship with Jesus. I went because it was amusing to listen to the man hosting Sunday evening bible study. Don isn’t your typical Christian. At first I found it amusing to listen to him. I was never against anyone’s belief; I just didn’t believe. The more I went the less amusing it became. Finally, one Sunday long after Don had gone back home and the Pastor had resumed his bible study sessions, I asked the Lord to come into my heart, and change my circumstance. I still wasn’t convinced. In fact, until I was in that hospital room staring at a rainbow and a dove that the moment came when I understood why I had gone back. While I had been searching for the big miracles God had been giving me little ones all along. I’d been so caught up in the storm and the mindset that I was destined to live out my family legacy of dying of cancer, that I missed a whole bunch of miracles while they were happening. I had wasted some of God’s grace for me. I had left it untouched, blaming him for the horrible turns of fate, and denying that my destiny could be good.

I lost sight of the bigger picture. While I had been waiting for the big things, the smaller things had passed me by. I lost sight of praising the storm for the rainbow that comes after. I’d strayed off God path for my by a long ways. I’d strayed so far Id walked out on my faith. Sometimes God gently guided me back on the path he had mapped out for me., and other times, he had harsher measures for getting my attention. I might have stepped outside the plan, but he never stopped guiding me back to it.

So, which is it for you? Fate? Destiny? Or God’s plan?