Never Count On Luck!

Dear Loving People,

But then I told you that the word ‘Luck’ should not exist! In fact, I don’t have it in my dictionary and guess what, it’s so misleading that millions get trapped by it every blessed day. Luck suggests that there is some magic wand that can get things done for you with no effort of your and reinforces the already too bad concept of a ‘free lunch’.

The main question is, do things happen by luck? If they do, then one can speak of someone being lucky or unlucky. But if they do not happen by luck, then it is inappropriate to use those terms. Ecclesiastes 9:11-12 states, “I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.

Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.” Much of what Ecclesiastes shares is from the perspective of a person who looks at life on earth without God, or life “under the sun.” From such a perspective—leaving God out of the picture—there seems to be good luck and bad luck.

In a capitalist world as the one we live in today, it’s so sad to note that some people think by some stroke of luck, they can make it. Some idle on doing nothing to improve upon their situations but hoping that by some luck, they will break into the upper circles of great achievements. I can assure you that it’s the nature of people who take no action in life to fail just like it’s the nature of ice to be cold.

While God can propel you from grace to grace, it will NEVER happen by luck. You have to demonstrate to God through meticulous thinking, planning, hard work and then prayers that you need to grow. Then God in his infinite love and mercy will after judging your motives propel you to that much desired status.

Thinking that luck will make you succeed one day is behaving like a man in a landlocked village who hopes to fly a bomber jet just because he sees such planes flying overhead while he goes hunting every morning.

A runner in a race may be the swiftest, but because someone in front of him stumbles, he trips over him and falls and does not win the race. How unlucky for him? Or a warrior king may have the strongest army but some “chance” arrow shot up into the air at random by a no-name enemy soldier just happens to pierce his armor in its most vulnerable location (2 Chronicles 18:33) resulting in that king’s death and the loss of the battle.

How unlucky for King Ahab? Was it a matter of luck? Reading the whole of 2 Chronicles 18, we find that God had His hand in the matter from the beginning. The soldier who shot the arrow was totally unaware of its trajectory, but God in His sovereignty knew all along it would mean the death of wicked King Ahab.

Again, imagine an inner voice tells you to leave your house and walk up to the road and you act upon it as instructed. While at the roadside, you are offered some amount of money as an unexpected present. Some people will rashly conclude that its luck. Now! Before you do that, remember you responded to the voice, you actually invested your time and energy to get to the road. Had it been you stayed put, you wouldn’t have been given the money. Is that luck?

What you get in life is proportional to the investment you make to get it.