Though I have written before on the difficulty of determining God's will, I do so again today.  I'm prompted to do so after reading over the last couple of weeks how various Islamic fundamentalists attribute their success in military strategy; obtaining funding money through kidnapping; or finding an appropriate site to stage a suicide bombing to Allah's "good" will.
     Lest I be accused of singling out Muslims in this regard, let me say right off that many Christians are equally guilty of attributing their ideas of "good" fortune to the "good" will of God.  Both sides demonstrate that although people may study their respective sacred texts earnestly to find hints about what God wants for them, so long as they continue to interpret these texts through the web of their politics, ethnicity, or attitudes about anything else, they will invariably emerge with a distorted picture of divine favor. Moreover, more often than not, they fail to see that they are doing so.
     Not that sacred texts cannot offer us credible guidance and advice.  They certainly can.  But sacred texts are only as useful as we allow ourselves to let them, not us, have the final word.  Our perspective will always be finite.  God's, on the other hand, is infinite.  And we must be prepared to undergo often lengthy journeys to find it.  As James observes in the first chapter of his letter, "Listen rather than speak."