Tales Of Luck
True stories, both.
A friend once removed – Mike’s friend, actually – is the luckiest guy I’ve ever heard of. He gambles and wins, over and over. Case and point? He recently purchased a business. The business is housed in a… transitional neighborhood in Philly. The building came with the business, and he’s been refurbishing the upstairs to live in.
He finished the third floor and moved in. The business is on the ground floor, and is pristine. The second floor, however, had fallen fallow. According to Mike, it looks like crack-heads lived there. There’s damage to ceilings and floors, strange poetry and drawings scrawled on the walls.
As Mr. Lucky is fixing up the floors, he pulls up some floorboards in the closet. There he finds a mint worth of baseball cards from the 1920’s, in pristine condition.
And, according to Mike, Mr. Lucky is a really nice, fun guy.
Then, there’s Ms. Lucky. She’s a friend of mine, Maddy is.
Maddy is a nice girl of Indian derivation. I met her at a job, and we struck it off as girls trying to take off a few pounds. She had been engaged to be married, a match she picked, and her fiancée was killed in an awful accident.
She had a mysterious illness which partially paralyzed her – some of her muscles have never completely recovered.
To take the top prize of the luckiest person I know, last year she was diagnosed with cancer, and it had already spread throughout her body.
Maddy wasn’t even 30 when all of this had happened to her. She is also one of the nicest people I know.
Into each life, some rain must fall. But stories like the above outline to me that rain doesn’t fall evenly. The child in me rails that Life Isn’t Fair, and the tiny, minute adult part of me nods sadly. It is, for me, the most challenging part of faith, to see terrible fates befall innocent people.
(warning: religious content ahead)
A few weeks ago, our priest talked about prayer and faith being a struggle. Jacob wrestled with God in prayer and was bodily harmed in the pursuit of faith. I think that I’m learning something here… I mistrust folks who have pure, blind faith. And I think that’s because their faith looks easy. Faith, true faith, can’t possibly be easy. It’s got to be a struggle.
God gave us minds as well as souls, and I believe he expects us to use them. He’d expect us to see tragedy and understand that it isn’t fair, and maybe isn’t even part of a bigger plan. It just is.
Struggling to accept…
(*)>
A friend once removed – Mike’s friend, actually – is the luckiest guy I’ve ever heard of. He gambles and wins, over and over. Case and point? He recently purchased a business. The business is housed in a… transitional neighborhood in Philly. The building came with the business, and he’s been refurbishing the upstairs to live in.
He finished the third floor and moved in. The business is on the ground floor, and is pristine. The second floor, however, had fallen fallow. According to Mike, it looks like crack-heads lived there. There’s damage to ceilings and floors, strange poetry and drawings scrawled on the walls.
As Mr. Lucky is fixing up the floors, he pulls up some floorboards in the closet. There he finds a mint worth of baseball cards from the 1920’s, in pristine condition.
And, according to Mike, Mr. Lucky is a really nice, fun guy.
Then, there’s Ms. Lucky. She’s a friend of mine, Maddy is.
Maddy is a nice girl of Indian derivation. I met her at a job, and we struck it off as girls trying to take off a few pounds. She had been engaged to be married, a match she picked, and her fiancée was killed in an awful accident.
She had a mysterious illness which partially paralyzed her – some of her muscles have never completely recovered.
To take the top prize of the luckiest person I know, last year she was diagnosed with cancer, and it had already spread throughout her body.
Maddy wasn’t even 30 when all of this had happened to her. She is also one of the nicest people I know.
Into each life, some rain must fall. But stories like the above outline to me that rain doesn’t fall evenly. The child in me rails that Life Isn’t Fair, and the tiny, minute adult part of me nods sadly. It is, for me, the most challenging part of faith, to see terrible fates befall innocent people.
(warning: religious content ahead)
A few weeks ago, our priest talked about prayer and faith being a struggle. Jacob wrestled with God in prayer and was bodily harmed in the pursuit of faith. I think that I’m learning something here… I mistrust folks who have pure, blind faith. And I think that’s because their faith looks easy. Faith, true faith, can’t possibly be easy. It’s got to be a struggle.
God gave us minds as well as souls, and I believe he expects us to use them. He’d expect us to see tragedy and understand that it isn’t fair, and maybe isn’t even part of a bigger plan. It just is.
Struggling to accept…
(*)>
posted by birdwoman | 6:49 PM
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