how does God decide which soul to take back?

How is our fate decided? When do they choose a day to be our last? At what moment does heaven look at someone and whisper, “It is time.”

People always say life is not promised. Seize the day. Live in the moment. Tomorrow is never guaranteed.

But if life was never meant to stay, then why give it to us so beautifully in the first place?

I know it sounds ungrateful like a creation questioning the Creator Himself. Like hands made from dust daring to ask the sky why it hurts so much. But witnessing how fast and how cruel death can come changes everything.

Why does it happen to people who still had softness in them? Why does suffering always seem to find the kindest souls? Why are the ones with gentle hearts the ones forced to leave so painfully? And why do cruel people continue living as if life itself keeps choosing their side?

How does God decide?

Is it random? A cruel lottery of names drawn every single day? Do our birthdays come with expiration dates? Do we have some invisible barcodes on our wrist that signifies how many years we’ll only live? Are there countdowns above our heads that only heaven can see? Was there already an ending written for us the moment we were born?

Dying itself is not the terrifying part. Death is inevitable; everyone knows that. What hurts is how it happens. Unexpected. Unfinished. Unfair.

Because how do you let someone dream of a future they will never reach? How do you place hope into someone’s hands only to tear it away one ordinary afternoon? Why give someone eyes capable of seeing beautiful tomorrows if they were never meant to witness them?

One rainy day can change an entire story.

People will call it an accident. That is the easiest explanation humans can give themselves. An accident.

But sometimes it feels impossible to believe that something so life-altering could happen without the universe noticing. Because if there truly is a God powerful enough to move galaxies, calm oceans, and create souls from nothingness, then surely, He saw it happen too.

So why allow it?

Why let a life disappear as if it meant nothing? Why let someone become a memory before they even had the chance to become everything they wanted to be?

The world continues anyway. Someone is born while someone else dies. Someone laughs while another mourns. The sun still rises after funerals, and for me that's the cruelest part of being alive, realizing the world does not stop for grief. No matter how shattered a heart becomes, time keeps moving like nothing was lost.

But something was lost.

So how does God decide which soul to take back?

Maybe there is no answer human hearts would ever be satisfied with. Maybe some questions are meant to remain painful. Or maybe heaven has reasons too enormous for mortal minds to understand.

And maybe that is where all these questions truly came from. Because one random night, the thought of disappearing suddenly terrified me. The idea that one day I could simply stop existing here. no warning, no dramatic goodbye, no extra time to prepare.

Just gone.

Like bubbles carried away by the wind before anyone even notices they were there. It scared me how fragile life really is. How a person can spend years building dreams, memorizing favorite songs, planning futures, falling in love with the world only for everything to end in a single unexpected moment.

And maybe that is why I keep asking these questions about God and fate and death. Because deep down, I am terrified that one day, I will disappear too.

So perhaps all I could ever ask for is that when God finally decides to take my soul back, He finds my hands empty from carrying too many almosts.

No gardens left waiting for spring. No oceans inside me still begging to be seen. No sunsets I loved from afar but never had the courage to walk toward.

Only a soul worn gently by living, like a candle that reached the end of its flame naturally, without the wind stealing it too soon.