Unearned Luck

Photo by Jean-Philippe Delberghe on Unsplash Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, and strengthen you. -1 Peter 5:8-10 The LORD said to Satan, "Whence have you come?" Satan answered the LORD, "From going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it." And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?" Then Satan answered the LORD, "Does Job fear God for nought?...touch all that he has, and he will curse thee to thy face." -Job 1:7-11 St. Pe...

Trusting another person is most difficult for me. When others have suggested trusting God or leaving it in God's hands, I have come away from such advice feeling confused and frustrated. I have never known how to trust God. The other day, though, I was in a tight situation, though not one that was harmful. It was a good opportunity for a lesson. All of my concentration was focused on the bad things that were about to happen at the moment and the mountain of bad things that would result. My stomach was churning. My palms were sweating. My eyes kept moving from one indicator of impending doom to another. My mind was racing through how to get out of the situation once it had turned bad. In the midst of the turmoil, stress, and panic, the image of St. Peter walking on the water took the place of all of the gloom that was filling my mind. The face of St. Peter keeping his gaze on Christ instead of on the storm and the waves became the answer to the bad things that were about to happe...

Before we describe as paranoia the thoughtful consideration of the possibility that there will not be a general election in November, we should take an educated look around the world today and throughout history and come to understand how people have thought that the drastic changes quietly overtaking them were only others' paranoia.  Most in Weimar Germany never believed that the funny little man and his pitiful group of losers would ever be a leader let alone lead them into a world war which would destroy their families, neighbors, friends and lives and would leave a lasting sorrowful legacy for their nation.  Few believed that a book written by a couple of pissed off intellectuals would result in almost 100 years of organized, government-sponsored terror, murder and poverty like the world has never seen in two of the oldest countries on the planet during a century that historians and popes have called the bloodiest in history.  Calling a sensitivity to the lessons of...