Someone recently asked me if I ever thought that saying “it’s God’s will” at a funeral was rude. It seemed rude to her, as though it’s perfectly okay to assume that God wanted to kill off her father. She rejected this notion.
I suggested that the phrase “it’s God’s will” might be best understood as “stuff happens which you can not possibly have any control over.” Even if someone does not have faith in a grand plan, perhaps at least they can accept this, as in the Serenity Prayer.
You do not have to accept the notion of a cosmic puppet master to derive comfort from the Spirit of God.
The Japanese have a great word for this. “shikata ga nai” roughly translated “it cannot be helped now”. This is not mere fatalism, but rather implies in its utterance the need to move on with life in the face of circumstances that one cannot adequately explain and do not have the power to change. Excerpt from, Project Muse by Jane Iwamura, American Quarterly, Volume 59, Number 3, September 2007, pp. 937-968