The Unlikely Order of Being

Have you ever been at a table where a player called for a card to come out of the deck, perhaps for the river -- and that very card came out?

We've seen it happen a few times at poker tournaments.  But we only realized recently that you can do something like that every night to win big money.

Oklahoma's state lottery has a "Poker Pick" game.  You buy a card with five playing cards from a standard deck on it.  If it makes a good poker hand, you win an instant prize -- and you can win a second time if the cards drawn by the lottery every night match yours.

But there's a big catch.  You apparently CANNOT pick the cards you play; a machine gives you something randomly on a ticket.  And you can't use cards on your ticket to supplement the cards drawn by the lottery, to improve your winnings.  Perhaps that's why Poker Pick only seems to have a few hundred winners every night.

If your ticket matches the five drawn by the lottery, you can win $100,000 - and you defy some pretty huge odds.  The state lottery website actually shows you the chances of doing that: one in almost 2.6 million.

Would you enter a lottery with unlikely odds that high?  Plenty of people do it when games like Powerball have a huge jackpot.

But here's the thing - you're living on a place which defies those odds right now.  It's called Earth.  Wherever you're reading this on Earth.  That's because our solar system defies logical odds -- with the Earth making a constant regular orbit around the Sun, and turning in a predictable way so that a day lasts 24 hours with slow adjustments for seasons.

Why doesn't our orbit go out of control, and go more "on tilt" than it normally does in a year?  We dare to think we know the answer:

In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heaven and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat. - Psalm 19:4-6

King David wrote this psalm, and noticed the regular pattern of sunrises and sunsets.  So did other Biblical writers.

The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. - Ecclesiastes 1:5

You might argue things on this earth have "evolved" over millennia and centuries. But how do you explain this orderly pattern of the days, seasons and years in the heavens?  Why doesn't that "evolve," with the sun rising earlier and earlier year-round?  Again, we think we know the answer.

From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the Lord is to be praised. - Psalm 113:3

Scientists and writers smarter than us have noted this Earth could not sustain life without the orbit it has, and the location it holds related to the Sun.  Astronomers can chart what will happen - day by day, year by year.

Unlike cards from a deck of poker cards, the paths of the solar system are sure.  And they lead us on only one logical path for an explanation.

Do you not know?  Have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.... his understanding no one can fathom. - Isaiah 40:28

We know of no better explanation than this - an explanation that defies human logic and odds.  Do you?