I don’t think it’s news to point out to you all something about life, that sometimes all the things we work for, all the things we hope for, get excited about, even dedicate ourselves to, often just don’t seem to pay off in the way we expect. On Father’s Day today I think of someone like my father, who worked for the same big company for more than 40 years, dedicated and working hard his whole life for one place, and about two years after he retired the company filed for bankruptcy, and now it’s long gone. I’m not sure there’s a recognizable bit of it left anywhere, and most…

There are a few phrases about God that people use all the time that sometimes we should slow down and think about more closely. Today I would like to draw your attention to one of them, a little phrase from an 18th-century poem that actually has always driven me a little crazy: The Lord works in mysterious ways. Let’s be honest: You know when you last heard this phrase, or when you said it yourself: I’ll bet it was the last time you heard of something bad, but not too bad, happening to someone, or even more likely I’ll bet it was the last time you heard of someone succeeding…