St. Arbucks Chapel – April 9, 2025
Many years ago, when I was in middle school, I remember a sermon where the pastor said, “Don’t ever ask for the song, ‘We’ve Only Just Begun,’ to be sung at a wedding in this church. Because, there is that line in the song, ‘A kiss for luck, and we are on our way!’ We as Christians don’t believe in luck. We believe in God.” The sermon obviously made an impression on me because I can still remember the sermon as an early teenager. Every now and then I think about the sermon whenever I hear people talk about luck.
A pastor friend of mine, Steve May, recently wrote a column about it. I thought I would share it with you.
LUCK HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.
Some years ago, I read about a research project investigating the phenomenon of luck. I guess it goes without saying that I don’t believe in luck. Neither, apparently, does Richard Wiseman, the psychologist that directed the study. (His book based on the study is called The Luck Factor: The Scientific Study of the Mind.)
After examining traits, beliefs and habits of people that could be characterized as either lucky or unlucky, Dr. Wiseman determined that “lucky” people tend to create their good fortune via four basic principles.
- They know how to create and recognize good opportunities for themselves.
- They make good intuitive decisions.
- They have positive expectations.
- Through resilience, they turn bad situations into good ones.
His conclusion is the same that most of us would come to: There’s no such thing as random good fortune or random misfortune. We create these things with our attitudes, our actions, and our expectations.
For this reason, there should be no such thing as an “unlucky” Christian.
What some call luck — positive experiences that work in your favor — is part of our inheritance. We don’t call it luck, though. We call it being blessed. It’s not the result of random fortune. It’s the result of living by faith and walking in obedience. As King David said…
“Real help comes from God. Your blessing clothes your people!” (Psalm 3:8 The Message)
I encourage you, then, you to practice living faithfully with a sense of expectation. There’s nothing presumptuous about it. In fact, we’re called to do it.
We can live in joyful expectation of the goodness of God. And we can remember the words of Jesus:
“According to your faith, it will be done to you.” (Matthew 9:29)
As my nun friend, Sr Ann Catherine, used to say when she inhabited this earth, “Faith makes things possible! It doesn’t mean it will be easy!”