"God Did This for Me"
Relaxing with a free weekly neighborhood tabloid one morning I browsed a story about a local beauty pageant. The victor was a young Christian woman who thanked God for helping her win. Naturally I pondered that very sincere statement of gratitude, and asked myself the usual litany of questions about how God relates to us and the world. Why or how did God help this woman win the pageant? Is God involved in such affairs? How does God decide when and where to alter the course of events? Is there a “divine plan?” If there is, is it a big, general plan for the universe, or are details scripted as well? Do my prayers make a difference? If they do, why are some of the things I ask of God realized, and others not? What happens to people who have no one to pray for them? One compelling answer to the problem of prayers “fulfilled” and “ignored” came to me quite by accident. I was sitting in a parking lot trying to find a certain radio station, when I mistuned to what must have been...