by Ramesh Richard

“Does God play dice with the universe?” asked Mr. Einstein. He couldn’t bring himself to an unqualified “yes” to that question. My question is more personal: Does God play dice with your life? At a visceral level, life seems to be random, alternating between good and bad, joy and sorrow, up and down, according to the roll of celestial dice. Describing his experience in the Holocaust, Dr. Viktor Frankl balefully observed, “The world [seemed] to be an incoheŕent conglomeration, a confusion of accidents with no discernible linkage.”

I am still recovering from the memorial service for the parents and relatives of a close friend who were brutally murdered in a recent massacre in Rwanda. The double horror of the Central African situation seems a cruel combination of evil and madness. Within just a few days I was again plunged into grief as the father of a colleague in international ministry was gunned down. They counted 26 AK-47 slugs in the corpse. Then, only hours later, I received an email about a fine Christian leader, my age, who had succumbed to a sudden heart-attack.

Is God playing dice with the universe?… with their lives?…with my life?

It is not at all unusually to see non-Christians passionately pursuing their plans and goals. They have direction but no belief in a Divine Director. Many Christians, on the other hand, while professing belief in the sovereign God of the universe, lead lives devoid of direction. I find so many Christians who live randomly, accidentally. They muddle from one day to the next, contradicting the biblical view that God intends us to live with purpose.

No, life is not a divine board game. Life is divine theater—conceived, written, and produced by the Master Playwright.

How Did You Happen?

Psalm 139 emphatically asserts that your coming into this world was not a random event. You may have been an accident from your parents’ point of view. But any God worth his salt wouldn’t allow you to just happen.

God’s description of how you happened is far more deliberate. He planned you. He had you in mind before you were born. God intentionally formed your inward parts and wove you together in your mother’s womb. You are fearfully and wonderfully made by a God whose works are wonderful. (Ps. 119:13-14) The entire science of genetic mapping confirms the DNA miracle you are—there is no one else like you. Scientific discoveries about the human genome confirm the Bible’s assertion that you were “skillfully” put together. (Ps 139:15) Even if you were cloned, you would still be the only one with your distinctive age, circumstances, history, attitudes, and volition.

Your coming into existence was no accident in God’s plan. You didn’t just happen, so don’t live as if you did. Your arrival on this planet was a grand, planned event. Live intentionally!

How Are You Happening?

Your present life is no accident either. It’s not an “accident waiting to happen,” although you might feel that way sometimes.

A terrible tragedy may have struck you or someone close to you, and it continues to create complications that you can’t seem to manage alone. That was the case not long ago for a neighbor family involved in an automobile collision that took the lives of four of their five children. The loss is impossible to grasp. A friend’s wife of four decades suddenly decided they were no longer compatible. Two of his senior staff left him the same week. His long-time secretary also quit. He wonders if suicide isn’t the best option. Such loss is impossible to comprehend, much less address.

As difficult as life can sometimes be, the Psalmist says that the days “ordained” for you were written in God’s book even “before one of them came to be.” (Ps 139:16) Not only did God have who you would be in mind before you were born, He had already written the script of your entire life. So instead of living randomly, without spiritual priorities and goals, your responsibility is to discover your unique place in God’s great eternal purpose and then live it out.

How Will You Happen?

Your beginning was not left to chance, nor is your being. Your becoming must not be either. How, then, do you ascertain God’s intentions for you—your part in God’s play—and realize them in your life? Here are three practical suggestions:

First, decide on your passion in life—what should be your first love? If you have multiple passions, you will be ripped to pieces internally, resulting in a fragmented, random life. If anything other than the Lord Jesus Christ is your first love, you will fall into idolatry. You won’t know how to balance life. Your family, your work, your ministry, your interest—all of these are crucial dimensions of your live. But they must not be your passion.

It is your overriding preoccupation with your first love Jesus that overrules the accidents of life. This is His first commandment: to love Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Your passion for Jesus is the “discernible linkage” that Dr. Frankl spoke about. It will be the anchor that keeps you steady in the inevitable storms of life. Live by this passion!

Next, identify your mission in life—what should you do repeatedly? Your mission is not your vocation or job. Broadly speaking, your mission is the same as every other Christian’s: to make God look good and His Christ well know. Your unique mission is how you individually advance that divine storyline, for God will receive the glory He is due from His creation by making Christ well known on earth.

What part are you going to play in this drama? To discover your unique place in God’s dramatic purpose—your specific mission—you have to understand three central aspects of your life: your history, your geography, and your “createdness.”

Understand your history. You are a unique person at a specific time in human history. How has God brought you to this moment in your life? I suggest you spend some time with God, away from your normal routine, to work on personal history. Questions like the following will help you:

  • Where has God broken you, crushed you, sensitized you? We minister best in the areas where we have become vulnerable, experienced, and broken. You will receive considerable understanding of your mission from that question alone.
  • What season of life are you in? God’s drama includes life cycles we all have to go through. Fred Smith, Sr. (a mentor, who’s 83) taught me to appreciate the distinctive qualities of life’s successive seasons before they pass. They will pass. Our children have now matured to the age that I must make my weekends count in their lives. I can’t put this off, or they’ll grow up, and my opportunity will be forever lost. So I have reduced my 1998 weekend travel by 75 percent. Each of life’s seasons is unique. Understand them, value them, and translate them into Christian realities.
  • What does your heritage bring to your mission? How have your parents and grandparents influenced the course of your life? There are five generations of ministers on my father’s side. I couldn’t escape the ministry! My children receive beneficial influence toward their life missions from both sets of truly grand grandparents.

Understand your geography. Where has God physically placed you on earth? I met a Pakistani pastor fleeing for life with his family. The majority culture razed their entire village to dust, burning Christian homes, businesses, and schools. His geography contrasts markedly from that of a pastor in Philadelphia who works with the affluent.

The onrush of globalization has greatly enlarged our potential geographic spheres of influence. It’s easier now for the Philadelphia pastor to do something for the Pakistani pastor. God has placed you in a particular community, city, and country. Do something significant there. But our increasingly connected world stubbornly asks for your involvement in some way beyond your national boundaries. Take advantage of ministry opportunities not so readily available to Christians of earlier generations.

Understand your “creadedness.” You are a remarkable creation. What makes you so remarkable are the ways in which you are peculiar or odd! Seriously, study how God has put you together. (I am not talking about psychological profiling here, thought there are excellent tests that reveal much about ourselves.) For instance, I detest dealing with retirement and insurance plans, while our treasurer loves those kinds of details! We are simply wired differently.

Pay particular attention to how God has specially gifted you. What spiritual gifts and human talents and abilities have been given to you? Look for Him in the details of your past and present. Do you see any connection between where God has broken you and gifted you? As correlations emerge from your history, geography, and createdness, your mission will come into sharper focus. Look for God’s workings in your life.

Finally, pursue a vision for your life—what difference should your life make in the world for God? Vision pursues a changed-for-the-better state of affairs. As you increasingly arrange your life around the Lord Jesus Christ (your passion) and better understand His ways in your life (your mission), develop a sensitivity to the world around you. Listen to Him for direction in life.

What needs do you see? Which ones stay with you? Make you lose sleep? What resources do you control that can help you do something about those needs? Your vision will emerge from matching your perception of needs with your resources. Not all needs are opportunities. But you will find opportunities in the presence of needs. Needs show direction for involvement. Seriously ask yourself Oswald Chambers’ question: “Where can Christ help Himself to my life?” Listen to His answer.

Joni Earekson Tada illustrates all three levels of finding one’s place in God’s eternal purpose. Her passion is Christ. Her mission was formed out of brokenness—severe deprivation as a quadriplegic. Her vision now pursues the making of Christ well-known by helping the physically disadvantaged.

After serving time for Watergate complicity, Charles Colson ministers to prisoners. I know a young woman who had five stepfathers by the time she was 19. She finds her mission in ministering to children from broken homes with a vision to change their lives. My own vision is to change the way world thinks and hears about Jesus Christ. In those two verbs—think and hear—lie my giftedness, personality, experience, resources, and opportunities.

What Role Will You Play? May I challenge you to write a mission-vision statement for your life? Just fill in these blanks. You can send it to me if you want. I’d like to read it. The mission of __[Insert Your Name]__ is to make God look good and His Christ well known by _______________________________________________________.

Tack it up on our bulletin board. Put it on your refrigerator door. Memorize it; talk about it—then live it. But don’t write it in stone. God continues to make new history, and He retains the right to change what we come up with so He can conform our history to His. Your written statement says that you surrender to your present understanding of God’s way in your life to the best of your ability.

Life is not accidental. We must refuse to live accidentally, randomly, and unintentionally. Your life is not a divine toss of the dice. You are not incidental to the purposes of an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God.

A divine, real-life drama continues to unfold, and we are in the middle of it. As both audience and actors, we advance the world’s longest running play, whose author, director, and producer is God Himself. He has written a magnificent part for you in His masterpiece. No humanly inspired plot could take so many twists. No humanly conceived story could seem so disjointed, yet end in such perfect resolution, for “we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

Live by Him. Look for Him. Listen to Him. Best actor nominations are up for grabs. What role will you play in the Eternal Drama?