Everything Happens For A Reason Series

I think most of us would agree — we don’t like going to funerals.

It’s not that we aren’t willing to pay our respects. It’s not that we didn’t genuinely love the person who passed.

We don’t like going because we don’t know what to say.

We’ve all been there. We want to say something comforting. Something profound. Something that will ease the ache just a little.

And sometimes, with the best intentions, we end up saying things that are… a little off.

“God needed another angel.” That’s mixed up. Human beings don’t become angels. That would actually be a demotion.

Or this one: “God moves in mysterious ways.”

People say that like it’s a Bible verse. It isn’t. It’s an old hymn. Or, if you’re from my generation, it’s an old song by U2. Now it’s true — we don’t always understand God’s purposes. But that phrase has a way of shutting down questions.

But there’s one phrase that’s harder to untangle — because it actually is a biblical principle:

“Everything happens for a reason.” That phrase is meant to bring comfort, but it almost never does. In moments of deep grief, it can feel like a slap in the face.

When pain is raw, being told “everything happens for a reason” can feel like someone is trying to explain away your tears.

And by the way — when you go to a funeral, you don’t always have to say anything. Remember Job’s friends? For seven days, they just sat with him in silence. It wasn’t until they started explaining things that everything went off the rails.

So today, we’re going to tread carefully. We’re going to open our Bibles and ask: What does God actually say?

I invite you to read Romans 8:28-39 with me. Please stand to honor the reading of God’s word.

[READ]

This is God’s Word. Thanks be to God.

Our Definitions Are Too Small

One of the reasons God doesn’t say “Everything happens for a reason” the way we mean it is because any list of reasons we would come up with is too small. Too limited. Too human-centered.

If we were going to write the list, it would sound something like this:

• “To reward faithfulness.”

• “To punish sin.”

• “To build character.”

• “To teach a lesson.”

But Scripture shows us something different. In John 9, the disciples see a man who has been blind from birth, and they immediately reach for a reason.

“Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

The disciples have two categories: Sin in him. Or sin in his parents. That’s it. That’s the list.

But Jesus answers them in a way that blows up their categories.

“It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

Now I want to be careful here — Jesus is not saying its good to be born blind. He’s not trivializing the man’s suffering.

He’s telling His disciples that their list is too limited.

They thought there were only two explanations. There were more.

And that’s the problem with “Everything happens for a reason” when we say it too quickly.

We assume whatever the reason, it will fit one of our familiar boxes. But God’s purposes are deeper than our categories.

Our definitions are too small.

Now, I want to be careful here, because when we talk about suffering, it’s not an abstract concept.

Some of you are not wrestling with inconvenience. You are wrestling with devastation.

The death of a child. A diagnosis that changed everything. An act of violence that split your life into “before” and “after.”

There are horrors that happen in this fallen world that cannot be reduced to clichés.

And I know that in moments like that, people lift their hands to heaven (or shake their fists) and cry, “God, why?”

That is not a faithless question. That is a human question.

But here is something we have to wrestle with.

If God chose to answer that question — if He said, “Here is the reason your child died,” or “Here is the reason that diagnosis came,” or “Here is the reason that act of violence happened” —Would that explanation actually heal you?

Would the reason make the loss smaller?

Would the logic make the grave less empty?

Or would it simply give you something to argue with?

Now, if we’re going to talk honestly, we can’t just talk about car wrecks and cancer. We have to talk about Auschwitz and Rwanda and Mother Emmanuel church in Charleston.

We have to talk about gas chambers and burning crosses and drive by shootings. We have to talk about famine in the Sudan and flooding in Texas.

If “everything happens for a reason” means God directly scripted every event for some tidy moral lesson, then that sentence becomes monstrous.