Luck, or Something Like it?

It's Friday, which will mean another poker tournament at the casino south of our town. We wonder if the crowd will be larger than usual, because of what day of the year it is.

Long before there was a band named "Green Day," there was St. Patrick's Day - when people (if you believe the stereotypes) are expected to wear green, drink green beer, eat corned beef and dance jigs. Some people have even associated the day with "good luck."

We found an article online five years ago that challenged that thinking - and went farther, to challenge the whole idea of "luck." We revisited that article this week at the suggestion of the author. That author now happens to be our church Pastor. Based on his reasoning....

Even giving credit to luck casually in our speech is a slight to God, who is the true source of all blessings.

This is why when others say, "Good luck, all in" during a poker tournament, we don't. And the reasoning about blessings goes back a long way....

The Lord had said to Abram.... "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing." - Genesis 12:1-2

God was (and is) the original blesser. But there's a problem here, because our Pastor's article also says:

When blessings come upon an individual, they typically are linked to physical and/or spiritual obedience and good works. God plainly tells us that blessings are a result of our actions.

We can say Abram (eventually renamed Abraham) was blessed for doing what God told him to do (Genesis 12:1, 4). But what did Abram do to be selected by God in the first place? Even that was a blessing from God - but the Bible doesn't provide any explanation.

Perhaps that moment was a-typical. But there's also this reminder:

....He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteousness. - Matthew 5:45

Whether you want a sunny day or need rain to end a drought, God sometimes blesses everybody - whether you're a believer or not. So if an atheist hits the poker jackpot, Christians really don't need to scratch their heads and wonder why. It could be that God has a bigger lesson to teach them.

We'll get back to this in a future post. But for now, we plan to skip the Friday casino tournament this week - not because of what the world calls the day, but because we're too busy to play right now. We hope you're not too busy to go over that article from 2012, and offer comments with your thoughts about it.