My church, Country Club United Methodist Church, is in the middle of a worship series called: Asking for Friend. During the month of July, I solicited questions from my congregation and people in our community questions they have that rarely get answered in church circles.
One that came up that is important, but came up after the topics had been chosen was:
Does God really have a plan? If God does, is it within the plan that people should get sick? A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with cancer - is cancer a part of God's plan?
Transparency Disclaimer: everything I'm about to write is from my point of view and a Wesleyan bent.
I believe God definitely has a plan for our lives. Do I believe God plans for us to get cancer, Covid-19, heart disease? No, I do not. Disease is not a part of God's ultimate plan for our lives. The human body was created in God's image, so therefore it was created perfect.
However, God did this crazy thing when creating humans - our Almighty God gave us free will. From the beginning of human consciousness (that's how I personally interpret the story of Adam & Eve), humans have chosen either life-giving or life-denying choices.
God said to Adam and Eve - eat from any tree but don't eat from that one (the tree of knowledge). So God created free will with the hope that these first humans would have chosen what was within God's will.
Of course, temptation becomes a possibility with you've been given choice. And what did those first humans chose? To eat from the tree. From that moment, humans have made a choice to turn from God's good plan. Brokenness entered creation and not only afflicted human life, but all of God's creation. Our bodies became fragile and no longer like God's. We are still made in God's image, but the "stain" (I don't really like that word, but a lot of people understand it) of sin plagues us.
But there's good news, God never leaves our side, never stops calling us. There have been times in Scripture when God goes silent, but that does not mean God isn't present.
What that means for us is God's hope for us is still intact, there is hope that we, yes we - communal, not just individuals, can still make choices that align with God's good plan for our lives. God sent God's very self into the human flesh of Jesus Christ to set the world back on a trajectory of goodness: where calamity, disease, war, and all those things that hinder us from living fully were put back into motion.
And just to be clear, none of this means that we become ill with critical illness because of all the choices we make, (there are definitely choices we can make that ensure better health), but all of creation is in a state of brokenness. When you are holding your loved ones' hand as he or she succumbs to the cancer ravaging their body, God weeps with you - God doesn't want this for us. It is not within God's plan for us to suffer.
There are times when we actually get glimpses of God's intention.
When we walk down our driveway and see a rose emerging from a crack, we see that God is making a way even the brokenness.
When we sense the peace that overcomes our loved ones' body as they enter into a new reality, we see that God is absorbing and redirecting the suffering into something new.
When we see a field of saplings emerging from the scorched earth, we see God's tenacity bringing new life.
God is creating things beautiful all the time. We may not always see it, but it's there. All we have to do is see how God fulfilled the promise of a messiah. We have Jesus, who is with us always to remind us, that God is at work. God is calling us forward to work with the Almighty to return all of creation to what God had in mind from the beginning.
God's plan is good - and it's okay to wonder if that's really true.
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