Good luck… I make my own luck… I don’t believe in luck… Lucky break, lucky stars, lucky numbers, getting lucky, lucky charms, luck be a lady, luck of the Irish, luck, luck, luck, luck, luck…. What is it? Does it even exist? The Word says that that the rain falls on the just and the unjust but doesn’t it seem that some people get the sprinkles while others get the hurricane? Don’t get me wrong, I do believe in God’s ability and desire to favor those who do his will, but I can’t get my mind off this culturally ingrained idea of luck… chance… fate.

Maybe that has something to do with the horrible “luck” I’ve had this week! ;-) – From my car breaking down on the side of I-10 on Saturday to locking myself out of my house later that night to breaking the side mirror on a borrowed truck yesterday, this has just not been my week! It makes me question whether the old cliche “everything happens for a reason” is really true or if there really are some things in life that just happen.

Do I believe that every little action that each person makes is designed by God? Wouldn’t that destroy the notion of free will? And if everything happens for a reason, would that predestination of fortune, decision, and action make God more or less just? I can’t imagine a reality wherein I never make a surprising decision or a world where every exchange is scripted beyond amendment… A life where there is no God beckoning confused people to choose Him or calling saints to take action for the furtherance of His Message that some may decide to follow Christ. I think that life is, sometimes, simply forged from happenstance, motives and decisions, and the overriding power of God to create and compel and judge and love whomever and whatever he wishes.

The driving point is that God, being a gentle and honorable sovereign, doesn’t force himself on anyone. Rather, he uses creation to influence creation. We decide whether to focus our attention on the church membership or the broken, sinful, searching people outside our walls. We decide whether to acknowledge or ignore the broken, sinful, searching parts of ourselves and the people sitting around us on Sunday morning. We decide whether to stand in our air conditioned, well furnished churches and pray for God to bless the indigent people in our community or to become that blessing and to take the compassion of Christ (with no strings, gospel tracks, or behavioral expectations attached) to those people. We decide whether or not to value light skin over dark or rich over poor. We decide whether the Kingdom of God is about more than our personal preferences. We decide whether to let minor annoyances ruin our day and whether to let someone else’s attitude affect our own. We decide who and what is important enough to warrant forgoing our own plans and desires. At the end of the day, the decisions that comprise our lives are ours to make. God is not absent in this process. By the influence of His Spirit on earth, he urges us toward truth, mercy, compassion, peace, fairness, and humility.

So what does that have to do with luck? Decisions do not happen in a vacuum. The plans and actions that we make and take are influenced from every direction. Perhaps, within this complex web of interacting thoughts and actions, uncertainty fabricates anomalies that we call luck. Or maybe luck really is a God-designed product of the the ever-changing symphony of decisions that only He can comprehend. In any case, I am reminded of a great scene from “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. Check it out below… and for heaven’s sake, pray that my week will improve. For the results of prayer aren’t chance at all, but the glorious evidence of God’s power to intervene in the chaos whenever he so chooses.