Blessing, Not Luck

Photo by Ian Stauffer on Unsplash

            In January of 2013, we got in Bob’s new truck - me, the 3 girls and him - and drove up to Connecticut from our home in Virginia.  Bobby, who was already at his friend Coury’s house in Connecticut, drove over from there.  It was my father’s 80th birthday, and my parent’s 60th wedding anniversary; and there was going to be a party.

            At the party, my parents looked well.  They were in great shape for their age, and so happy that everyone was there.  Dad gave a big speech.  He spoke of all their accomplishments, their wealth, their children; and attributed it all to their efforts, their willpower, and their great ‘luck’.  One thing after another was simply so ‘lucky’ to have happened to them.  But with every “luck” I cringed - I knew there is no such thing as ‘luck’ in this life.  It is a blessing; or it is not.  

            Yet my father’s speech had not a single acknowledgment to God; not a single word of thanks.  That would be out of place in my birth family, where we often heard that we didn’t need the “crutch of religion”. Oh yes, we went to church every Sunday, since that was what you did in acceptable societal life then; but God stayed there - where He belonged.  Even so, as I listened to my father’s speech, I couldn’t help thinking: a lifetime of blessings, and not a single acknowledgement?  How disrespectful to God.  How unappreciative.

             While the party was ongoing, a snow storm came in - fast and furious.  By the time we got out of the party, the roads were dangerous and the going difficult.  We drove from Connecticut back south in white knuckle conditions, and I worried about Bobby.  He was not driving south.  He was going back to Coury’s on country roads.  Later, I discovered that his visibility became so bad - he had to use his GPS to stay on the road.  And yet, he made it - Thanks be to God.

            I knew that that was not ‘luck’ either.

            Within just a few weeks of the celebration of my parent’s great capabilities and ‘luck’, it began to run out.  One of my siblings was arrested & imprisoned for drug addiction.  Without ‘luck’, it seems that even ‘will power’ doesn’t go so well.

            Fast forward a few months.  My parents owned a ‘snowbird’ condo in Florida.  Meanwhile, Bobby needed a place to stay temporarily while he got on his feet at his first accounting job.  We asked if he could stay in the vacant condo till he did so, but the answer came back: “No.”  They did not want him “touching” their things; and anyway, he shouldn’t just be a “freeloader”.  They had “worked hard” for all their things, and they certainly weren’t going to share them with others. I guess their ‘luck’ was meant only for them.

            Fortunately, Bob and I have long counted on God when our own ‘luck’; or rather ‘reality’, goes bad.  And God always provides.  A work associate that Bob had known for just a few months, who lived in the same town as Bobby, heard of the situation and immediately offered to let him live in his home.  

            Once again, I knew that it was not ‘luck’ that led our new friend to do that.  I knew it was ‘blessing’.

            Nonetheless, I was hurt by this, and so I wrote my parents a letter.  In it I expressed my dismay that they would value their things over their own grandchild. I closed the letter with a “p.s.” that today seems prescient.  I said that God gives us things so that we can use them to be a blessing in other’s lives.   That everything we have - everything - comes from Him working through our efforts.  And He freely gives to us, all of us.  Indeed, ‘he makes the rain fall on the good and the bad.’  (Matt. 5:45)

         But I noted that in our lives, we needed to acknowledge that, and to make our Will in accord with HIS Will - if we wanted Him to continue to bless us.  His Word actually says that; His Law actually expects it.  Yet he will always give us our own Free Will to decide.  And if we choose not to, that is fine.  But we will lose the blessing.

            I simply let them know - that they had lost the blessing.

            Shortly thereafter, my dad had the minor strokes that led to his vascular dementia onslaught; and my mother’s health took a turn for the worse.

            Today, 8 years later, they are both in an Assisted Living Facility.  Having lost their health, their minds, and now their freedoms - they bemoan their fate.  They can’t understand why the willpower and luck that have always gotten them everything they ever wanted; has now let them down.  Instead of gratitude at a long life lived in blessing, surrounded by children, grandchildren & great-grandchildren; they angrily fight against the reality that has come upon them. Their version of that reality - the one with them, and not God -in control, is suddenly not working for them.

            As I sit here this morning, grieving for them, it suddenly dawned on me.  Clear as day.

            There is a reason why God has given us His Word.  There is a reason for the warnings that He repeats throughout it.  People continue to think He is ‘mean’ for doing so, and that Christians are ‘mean’ for repeating them, but the fact is now so brutally obvious to me.

            When we turn from Him, when we place ourselves in the center of our universe, and continue on a path that is leading away from His Kingdom, His Law and His Will - we are rarely, if ever, ‘punished’ immediately.  No voice from heaven booms down to us, no lightning bolt strikes.  In fact, those who leave often joke about that ‘lightning bolt’ not showing up - as they walk out the door of His Kingdom. 

            That’s what rebellion does; it makes you stupid.  Ignoring the Primacy of God, and trusting instead in yourself, your (re)interpretation of His law, and your own ‘power’ - does the same.

            For God simply lets us go - He’s actually, contrary to popular opinion, the most freeing of all.  He is a loving, not a controlling, Father.  And if we don’t want Him in the center of our lives, if we’d prefer He stay in the church building where we think He belongs - so as not to interfere with our wants and desires; then He’ll do just that. He won’t keep us in captivity.  Brokenhearted, he lets us go.  He lets us walk down our own path - a path away from Him, and away from, obviously, the blessings we have for being His children.

            Sadly, since there are only 2 Kingdoms in this world, we rarely realize, in the blindness of our pride, that we’re walking right into the enemy’s kingdom.  And Satan really doesn’t want to wake us up to that fact right away - otherwise, we would turn around real fast.

            So, Satan takes his time.  And usually it is a long time.  So long, that we have certainly forgotten that door to Our True Father’s Kingdom that we walked out of, so very long ago…  We blame our current circumstances, we blame those in our life, we blame everything and everyone - but ourselves.  Because we have forgotten the true source of our misery; it was our own choice.  It was putting our will - before God’s; our wants - in place of God’s, our law - in exchange for God’s.  Us, where He, should be.  And God simply let us do so.

            And that’s why we can never know, outside of God’s Word, His Will and His Spirit - that we are on the right path; that we are in the right kingdom.  As a priest said recently: “We have very little clarity in this world; that’s why faith, hope and trust in the Lord is essential.”  For life shows us over and over again, that we simply MUST trust His Will & His Laws - no matter how we feel about them.  They are the way to life, not death.  They keep us safely in His Kingdom, surrounded by His angels, His all-powerful help, His love.  Even when we don’t understand.  Even then.

            We simply must trust Him.  We must get to know His Word, His Laws and hence, most importantly, HIM - and then we must pray for His strength to follow Him.  And as any Good Father would do - He will give it. Because He ALONE is the source of every single solitary thing in our life that is GOOD. 

            There is no ‘Luck’.  There is only Blessing.

            The cost of losing that blessing is now staring me in the face; every time I think of, and grieve for, my mother and my father.  God willing, it won’t be an eternal cost; as Our Heavenly Father is the Prodigal’s Father - he always scans the horizon searching for us; hoping and praying we choose to come back home. But even so, to live in our enemy’s kingdom, even during this time on earth, is to ultimately end up living a temporal life of hell - for that is what the enemy’s kingdom actually is.

            For our life is not determined by our own power and our own luck.  It is all from God’s blessing…. or, (ultimately), it is not.