How would you interpret this phrase ‘serve God's mysterious ends’?
How would you interpret this phrase ‘serve God's mysterious ends’ in the third sentence?
Thanks. And it’s taken from The Egg by Sherwood Anderson.

the context:
One unversed in such matters can have no notion of the many and tragic things that can happen to a chicken. It is born out of an egg, lives for a few weeks as a tiny fluffy thing such as you will see pictured on Easter cards, then becomes hideously naked, eats quantities of corn and meal bought by the sweat of your father's brow, gets diseases called pip, cholera, and other names, stands looking with stupid eyes at the sun, becomes sick and dies. A few hens and now and then a rooster, intended to serve God's mysterious ends, struggle through to maturity.

Question

How would you interpret this phrase ‘serve God's mysterious ends’?
How would you interpret this phrase ‘serve God's mysterious ends’ in the third sentence?
Thanks. And it’s taken from The Egg by Sherwood Anderson.

the context:
One unversed in such matters can have no notion of the many and tragic things that can happen to a chicken. It is born out of an egg, lives for a few weeks as a tiny fluffy thing such as you will see pictured on Easter cards, then becomes hideously naked, eats quantities of corn and meal bought by the sweat of your father's brow, gets diseases called pip, cholera, and other names, stands looking with stupid eyes at the sun, becomes sick and dies. A few hens and now and then a rooster, intended to serve God's mysterious ends, struggle through to maturity.

Answer

"The egg" is a wonderful story.  It's one of my all-time favorites.

When something bad happens, we say "God works in mysterious ways"--it means that this thing might appear to be bad, but it leads to a greater good: 塞翁失马.

Normally, surviving is a good thing. But here, Anderson has described the life of chickens as an unending stream of horrors.  If this is the case, it is  a tragedy to survive and inflict this horror on your children.  By saying "intended to serve God's mysterious ends", Anderson implies that any kind and rational person, seeing the suffering that all chickens endure, would kill them as an act of mercy.  They only survive because God has some unknown purpose for them to serve.

Answer

The author, in using the phrase "God's mysterious ends", is probably a) describing the seemingly strange fate of continuous birth and death that the lucky few will have endure, handballs it to the supernatural realm of God, who probably knows the answer. Or b) is using it as an euphemism to describe the action of copulation.

Answer

Basically, it's saying that no one knows the reason why the hens and roosters are alive.
Why is it that they struggle through life when they're just going to die? Nobody knows.