We may throw the dice,
but the Lord determines how they fall.
—Proverbs 16:33
A friend of mine hand-delivered a copy of my book, Genesis: Biblical Commentary Through Dialogue, to Jordan Peterson. (Whether it ends up in some dusty pile of fan mail or is actually thumbed through, I may never know, but it sounds good, doesn’t it?) After she told me this, I reflected on all the events that led up to such a thing.
Jordan was my inspiration for opening the Bible in the first place, so without his lectures, I never would have written a book on Genesis at all. Without tuning into Joe Rogan’s podcast, I never would have joined the float tank studio where I met this friend. Without this friend experiencing some mysterious health concerns, she never would have joined the float studio either. And without her nephew graduating from Ralston College, where Jordan is Chancellor, she never would have had the opportunity to cross his path.
There alone are five lives woven together that led up to this event. And then, of course, are all the lives and events that led each of us to where we were for it all to happen. And on, and on, and on, traced back until the beginning of time.
Was it fate? Random chaos? God’s plan?
It’s just weird to think about who could have turned left instead of right at any point in time and mucked up the whole thing unfolding. The intertwining of all people and things is such a curious thing to puzzle over.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. I have no humor to interject or profound wisdom to impart; just the simple observation that life is strange, and maybe the reminder that, as much as we like to think we’re in control of certain aspects of our lives, so much more goes into how things play out for us.