luck?

it just wasn't meant to be

recently, someone i love made this observation and i had to just shut up and let it go by without a comment. some things are more useful blogging than they are in polite familial conversation over the holidays.

but

how can we say this with any rational basis at all? there's this silly entitlement thinking that seeps into our reason and our faith, prompting these ridiculous cosmic harmony notions that are uniquely western world in their perspective... as though the only things that are meant to be (ie: God's will) are graced with only circumstancial compliments.

all this talk of thorns and the 'sweat of your brow' in genesis 3.17-19 are summarized in a word that is often used to speak of the damned: curse. phrases like 'painful toil' are used by God to describe the way things are to be following humankind's first person embracing of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. however, if this 'curse' were not somehow the will of the sovereign, almighty God, then it would be lifted. i mean, one could easily argue that if God is truly omnipotent then nothing that exists or takes place can really do so outside of God's wanting or, at very least, tolerance.

so to default to the thought that, because something doesn't simply fall together in easy consonance and effortless balance, 'it must not be meant to be' is to have theological and situational expectations that are neither realistic, nor biblical.

perhaps there is room in my theology for luck after all...