The Enlightenment, the movement that said reason is the only way to know things, did humanity a tremendous disservice. It has no way of explaining why the good die and the evil prosper. At least, it has no explanation that completely satisfies.

Take today's funeral service...please. I'd much rather not attend another memorial in my lifetime. I have seen enough suffering this year. But God has me in there. I am his kid and I will move with the love he has shown me and bless those around me as best I can.
How do you explain a happy 6 year-old girl who adores her mom and dad dying of a congenital defect that went undetected? Why?

Whenever I ask "Why?" like this, I usually am demanding God to submit to my little realm of reasoning. That's like a horse demanding it's driver wear a bit in his mouth. It doesn't work that way. I may work by reasoning and logic, but I'm beginning to understand it's woefully short of being able to handle the big questions.

Reason is great for figuring out why the Sun gives off X amount of radiation and not Y amount. Reason does well to explain why the Tacoma Narrows bridge ripped itself apart in a windstorm. Reason may even explain why we keep having record hurricane seasons. But I doubt that.

Reason is not able to tell me why God would love me, or even how I can prove God exists. I can say that the evidence points to an intelligent design (I mean, C'mon. You mean to tell me that a rattlesnake developed a rattle and venom sacs just because he thought they would be good to have at parties?). But reason will not tell me conclusively that something invisible and immaterial actually exists.

These are the things people stumble over on their way to heaven. The speakers at the memorial service repeatedly said that this little girl was in heaven now, and I believe them. But I will put down hard money that there was someone in that crowd that said, respectfully, that such notions were a sales receipt for a bill of goods. To the contrary, I dare anyone to look into the eyes of someone they knew who just died and say that everything that person was still lies there. I have seen enough death masks to know that a living soul leaves a person's body and there is nothing of that spirit remaining in the hours after death. Whatever that substance is leaves that body here and goes somewhere else.

I am amazed people go through life thinking that it's all one big happy accident.

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