Chances

I just noticed a bunch of raffle tickets I purchased to benefit Cerebral Palsy research sold by the Elks Club back in the late summer. The drawing was September 30^th—six weeks ago. Obviously, I took a chance and I did not win. I didn’t buy them to win, because I never do. I never go to Las Vegas, either, because it would be a total waste of money, because I never win those kinds of things. I bought them to benefit a worthy cause. So, I did win in the end, didn’t I?

Chances are not what they appear to be. When we take a chance, we think we know the possible results, but in the end, we never really do. There are always alternative options for outcomes that we haven’t anticipated. There is always what happened, and then there is what happened next. And as Aslan told the kids in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we’re never told what might have happened. We live and move and have our being in a complicated, multi-stream braid of causes and effects. We play the game of chance whenever we get in the car to go somewhere, choose to eat at a certain restaurant, or put on certain cloths in the morning. There’s no escaping the matrix, even if you can see it. So, what do we do? Do we just blast or coast through life, never looking either back or forward very far, taking it on the chin or on the shoulder, whatever chance sends our way? Or do we strive our very best to grab as many lines of control as possible, and try to manipulate the system? Do we fight or fly?

I say that we do neither. The choice to buy the raffle tickets does more than benefit a worthy cause; it does something inside the buyer. Our choices either move us toward Goodness or away from it. Here, at least, we have control—in fact, in the end this is the ONLY control we really have. All else is merely influence, and influence is at least partly a function of the control we have in our own inner being. If there is chaos within we will probably have chaotic influence. If there is order and goodness within we will most likely influence the world for order and goodness. How others respond is out of our control, but not theirs.

So, you makes your choice and you takes your chances…and you reaps the consequences of the character of your choices, and then you makes your choice again…. Herein is the color and fascination of living!