One of my (many) spiritual challenges is the idea that everything happens for a reason.
Recently when I hosted a number of visitors from Canada who were members of a faith group, I found that they frequently referred to events that occurred throughout any given day during their visit were “sent” to the group as a message or direction from God.
I struggle with this belief.
I mean, I figure that God is a busy guy. There are almost 7 billion people on the planet. How can he be looking out and planning for the seemingly million things that we have happen in each of our lives every day? Surely sometimes we simply trip and fall. Or turn one direction onto a street rather than another. Can it really all be pre-ordained? If we take a seemingly random action, like choosing a restaurant, and then meet someone there that we otherwise would not likely have met, is that really a case of God setting a plan into motion?
Like I said earlier, I struggle with this. How does it fit into another tenet of faith, “free will?”
Today I took public transport up to Butha Buthe for a meeting with the team at the Apostolic Faith Mission Social Development Division (AFMSDD). I got into a ¾ empty taxi and rather than sitting and waiting for it to fill up, as is the norm here in Lesotho, the driver pulled away immediately after I got in. Was that random? Or was it because it was “meant to be?” Within 10 minutes the taxi was full from various roadside pick ups of passengers. (This is something that I had long theorized would happen if drivers just picked up and went rather than waiting for their taxis to fill).
When we arrived at the Butha Buthe bus stop I got out and walked towards the church. There was a street vendor on the corner selling molamu, the traditional stick carried by Basotho men, particularly shepherds. I had seen him there before because I was looking at buying one, but did not make the purchase at that time. Today I did. Was that fate? Or just a random decision with no particular impact for my life, or for the vendor’s? I don’t know but somehow the transaction got me thinking about “everything happens for a reason” and I walked off down the street with my new possession, and it was to the amusement of many of the people I passed. The Basotho often seem to get a kick out of foreigners doing or saying anything that is a cultural norm for them.
I arrived at the church about 20 minutes later after huffing and puffing my fat ass up the hill, and sat down outside to await the arrival of the AFMSDD team. I was a little early and they tend to be a little late. Half an hour later the pastor pulled up in his bakkie, alone. I knew something was up because his wife, ‘M’e Matšepo always accompanies him to our meetings. When he got out of the bakkie I saw that he was dressed in work clothes, wearing gum boots and carrying a sledge hammer. Not your typical pastoral garb. I asked him what was up and he explained that he was from the AFMSDD farm plot, where they were working on building a bit of a dam in the river to form a pool from which to draw water with their irrigation pump. My next question was did he remember that we were to meet today to complete the application form to open a health clinic. He said yes, but looked uncertain. Then we established that he would prefer to delay our meeting so as to complete this dam project (ha ha) if it was okay with me.
Always doing my best to be accommodating, I said no problem and immediately began plotting lunch at KFC, which in some ways, for me at least, is one of the best features of the town of Butha Buthe.
Pastor James offered me a lift back into town as he needed to visit the hardware store and I accepted. On the drive I told him about my purchase of a walking stick and asked him about my quandary of the day, “does everything happen for a reason?” His response (abbreviated greatly by me) was in the affirmative. He explained that his belief system featured an omnipotent God who planned out things long in advance. A God who knows each of us and has a plan for all. He also talked about how interconnected things are in life and described God’s omnipotence as being, in some ways, similar to the storage device in a computer. And then he gave an example of the interconnectedness of things with the following story:
Another pastor, a friend of his, travels a lot to different bible schools and universities across southern Africa as a teacher of prayer. This pastor has manuals which he hands out before each workshop that he leads. Some years back this pastor travelled to the university where his daughter was taking her degree in order to lead a prayer seminar. When the seminar was over, the pastor drove home, a distance of several hundred kilometres. When he reached home, he realized that he had left a large number of excess manuals behind in error. There were many more of these manuals back at home so there was no need to return immediately to retrieve the forgotten manuals. Months passed, and the manuals became completely forgotten by the pastor.
The pastor’s daughter was travelling to another city one weekend for a church event. The city she was going to was not far from her home town, so she packed her father’s manuals on the off chance that she had the opportunity to go home after she and her friends attended their planned church event. When they got to the city they were headed for, despite already being late for it, the group of students decided that they were hungry and must go to McDonald’s for breakfast.
The pastor, en route to a speaking engagement, and with no idea that his daughter was in that city, decided he was hungry and pulled into the same McDonald’s for breakfast for himself, just as his daughter and her friends were sitting down to eat their breakfast.
Pleased to see her dad, the young woman approached and greeted him and then told him she had the long forgotten manuals in the car and retrieved them, putting them into her father’s car.
At this point in Pastor James’ recounting of the tale I thought “yeah, yeah, sure, sure, I get it.”
But he wasn’t quite done. The father and daughter parted company and that pastor went on to his speaking event. While unloading the car with the materials for his seminar, he realized that he had forgotten to pack the manuals which were a key part of the material that he would be presenting that morning. The very same type of manuals which his daughter had given him at McDonald’s, even though neither she nor he had any plans for meeting that morning.
And that, Pastor James concluded, was a very good example of the interconnectedness of God’s plans for people’s lives.
Although I am still far from convinced that “everything happens for a reason,” I must admit that this story gave me some serious pause.
James and I parted company and I went inside to the KFC for my lunch. I noticed a young white woman who entered shortly after I placed my order. Just a passing glance, really. Here in Lesotho, once you leave the capital, there are so few whites that we really stand out in a crowd. But I have this trait in my own behaviour which makes me avoid approaching other white people when I see them. My brain says, “what, you are going to go over and say what – hi white person, I’m white too, let’s be pals?” So I got my food and sat down and ate it.
Ten minutes later, a vaguely familiar young Mosotho man approaches and greets me, asking if I am Ntate Andy who has attended his church sometimes? I tell him yes, and he introduces himself, Godfrey (the Basotho, as a general rule, have the most interesting English names). And then he introduces me to Elizabeth, his wife, who turns out to be the young white woman who entered KFC shortly after me just a few minutes earlier. Of course I am surprised, as I know only one other mixed race couple here excluding ‘M’e Mahlompho and I. Of course it is not a problem, just surprising.
And then I remembered her. When I attended a Sunday service at the AFM church in Butha Buthe almost a year ago, I remember turning around in my chair to “check out” the congregation and a number of rows back I spotted this young white woman. I remember at the time being surprised to see another white person at the service. I assumed she was a Peace Corps volunteer and never thought of her again until today. If our meeting at the church this morning had gone on as planned, I likely would not have met this young couple.
So now I have begun the waiting process to see if today’s “chance” meeting turns out to have happened “for a reason.” Pastor James cautions that sometimes it takes years for such purposes to become clear. So I guess that I will just wait and see.
