That narrow path leaves no room for mystery, and it can trap you in a world of hurt. Once we figure we're savvy enough to explain plane crashes, submarine sinkings or deaths in a tunnel, we can be lured into the snare of wanting to make sense of disasters instead of admitting we're not omniscient. Think what that kind of explanation says about God - and about us. Bad things surely do happen. That's one source of newspaper headlines.
Good people make mistakes and hurt one another.
Gravity's law is seldom repealed on earth. No, God does not cause misfortune just to punish the unrepentant. But life lived in collaboration with sin has consequences. The mother, Taylor said, was convinced her daughter's tumor was the mother's punishment for smoking cigarettes. That was the way the woman made sense of her situation.