Faith: Finding Reason in a Chaotic Universe

by: Michael J. Spindler

Having faith… It’s not about understanding your higher power or even about defining a higher power. It’s not about knowing chapter and verse of any given scripture, or of taking part in religious practices. It’s not about the simple spirituality offered by freedom from those practices.

Faith is simply letting go and trusting that everything has purpose and happens for a reason.

You’ve heard of stories of people who canceled a flight, only to find out later that the plane crashed. This goes deeper than those “feelings” we get on occasion. In everyday life, on a much less dramatic scale, you’ll find it’s the simple incidents that have such an unexpected purpose.

You start to leave a building, but because of something you have to take care of before you go, you detour from your usual route of departure. And there, out of the blue, you run into an old friend that you haven’t seen in years.

Whatever the reason that led to the encounter, you realize later that it happened either to remind you of something you might have forgotten, or to show you something you needed to learn. Once the pleasantries and small talk are out of the way, the two of you might go on your merry ways, never to reconnect again. But have faith: there was a reason for that off-chance encounter.

The same goes for not getting that great job or being turned down for a date with the person of your dreams or.... The list of goes on and on. The point I’m trying to convey is that to find happiness in life, it’s important to remember that everything happens for a reason. So if you didn’t get that job, there’s a reason why. It wasn’t merely a bad hair day, nor were you under- or over-qualified, nor was it who you needed to know but didn’t.

The reason you didn’t get the job may have been in your best interests. Despite the job description or the classy appearance of the work environment, it might just have been the job from hell. Or perhaps it would have led you down a life path you weren’t meant to be on. Getting turned down might have been tough — but it was your higher power looking out for you.

It’s great to have dreams. It’s even better to follow through and take the steps necessary to achieve those dreams. But on occasion, you’ll get what I like to call a “cosmic course correction”. That is, you have a predefined end result until the day of your last breath. You can acquire what you want, as long as it does not conflict with that path. You will love whom you love, even marry and possibly divorce. There is a lesson to be learned from every life event, and it will prepare you for the next steps in your path.

Happiness is not in the daily grind of surviving in this man-made society. Happiness will be found once you let go, ride the storms out, and have faith that all will work out in its own way and for a reason. The trick is to not shut out the apparent negatives.

Instead, embrace the chaos. Learn what you can from the situation, be it good or bad. Why? Because those who fail to learn are doomed to repeat the cycle again and again.

Repeating that cycle is like trying to graduate from high school when you actually stopped learning clear back in first grade. Like it or not, the university of life is not a matter of careful planning. Nor is it an institution you can joke your way through.

You will only move forward in life if you open up and have a little faith.

See Also:

Faith That Moves Mountains: First, Forget The Mountain
The first thing it means to me is that I have a very small, limited picture of what faith is able to do. It means that I need to open my eyes to just how big and powerful God is, and that I need to constantly remind myself, "With God, all things are possible."

You Cannot Reason with God
The Lord will take away all human reasoning. From the human standpoint it may seem impossible, but the Lord wants to show us the distinction between human reasoning and true faith, true saving faith, which is the gift of God.