According to Dictionary.com, and to believers I'm sure, to
be blessed means to be "favored divinely or by a supreme being". But
to be lucky simply means you won the coin flip.
Luck is largely predictable. If a blindfolded pedestrian crosses a busy highway
during rush hour and manages to arrive at the other side safely he should
consider himself damn lucky. However, if said pedestrian has a death wish and
tries the same feat a second time the law of percentages dictates he will very likely
be crushed by a passing sedan. The pedestrian isn't unlucky, necessarily, just ignorant. Now, if that same blindfolded pedestrian attempts
to cross a backwoods country road at 3am and is lambasted by a cement truck, he
would be damn unlucky.
Determining what distinguishes a blessing–specifically what distinguishes
a blessing from sheer luck– requires more than applied mathematics. For
example: Let's consider the fabricated case of Matilda. Matilda is a single mother
struggling to raise three children. She works full time as a secretary for an
accounting firm and somehow manages a part-time graveyard shift stocking shelves at Kmart.
She struggles to put food on the table, pay her rent, pay her heating bill, buy
birthday gifts for her children, etc. You know the story. Also, Matilda is a theist (believes god can intervene in
earthly affairs).
One Thursday while Matilda is on a smoke break (she smokes
because she is stressed) she notices a scratch-off lottery ticket adrift in the wind. She plucks it midair, scratches it with her sole quarter and identifies three matching pictures of burlap sacks imprinted
with dollar signs. She's a winner!
Is Matilda lucky or blessed (or think she's blessed)to have unwittingly stumbled
upon a winning lottery ticket? I think the answer depends on the size of the prize. If she wins one
dollar, she's lucky, but minimally so. Same deal if she
wins five dollars. But any prize of ten dollars or more buys bread and milk. Matilda feels genuinely lucky. $50? This could be the luckiest day of her life.
$100? Matilda will retell the story of the lucky winning lottery ticket at water
coolers and Thanksgivings for years. $200? $450? Hot shit! Matilda is one luc-kay gal! Or, is she blessed?
At what dollar amount, exactly, does Matilda's dumb luck become an
honest-to-goodness "god shined on me today" blessing? We know
Matilda's living/life situation. But degree matters: Is she relatively happy? Has she been simply "in a rut"
these last few years, or is she completely desperate? Are the utilities in
arrears? Rent? Have loan sharks ordered jack-booted thugs to feed her to a wood
chipper because she defaulted on a back alley deal? Other variables are at play too: Are the kitchen
cabinets or fridge bare? Is Christmas coming up? Did Matilda recently pray, "God,
give me a break or I'm going to feed myself to the wood chipper?"
Most likely Matilda's answer to this dilemma will be a knee-jerk reaction; she'll know if she's lucky or blessed the instant her brain registers the dollar
amount of her lottery winnings.
For the sake of argument I'll assume Matilda is: happy
but not fulfilled, current on rent/utilities but living paycheck to pay check, raising three solid C students, not being stalked by hit men but might be being stalked by the weirdo mail
clerk Chauncey who graciously offers the uneaten half of
his tuna melt sandwich daily, etc. I'd
peg the dollar amount at which a winning lottery ticket transitions from lucky to blessing at
$500. If Matilda's situation were more hopeless, I'd drop my estimate as low as $50. If she were in a more desirable living situation I'd go as high as $5,000.00, or more. But on average,
I believe that if Matilda happened upon a $500 winning lottery ticket she'd exclaim
"Thank you Lord for the blessing."
The wild card factor in the equation is the free ticket
prize. Matilda might consider herself marginally lucky for finding a lottery
ticket that awards her a second chance at a cash prize, but
feel bummed if said free ticket is a loser (or if the original ticket is a loser). Ultimately that scenario is a wash,
if not a disappointment. But what if Matilda gets crushed by a meteorite while
walking to the 711 to claim her free ticket? That would make her extremely unlucky (or
un-blessed perhaps—more on that later) regardless if the next lottery ticket on
the roll is a ten million dollar winner. But if the meteorite lands three feet
behind her (which is either extreme luck or blessing in-and-of itself) and the cashier
rips off that ten million dollar ticket and hands it to Matilda, no theist would hesitate
to claim that Matilda has experienced a blessing of the highest order.
Believers in blessings need to congregate at a weekend retreat
and determine a workable formula in which one can plug in the variables and deduce
whether or not an incident is due to luck, or god's intervention.
Consider again if the result of the formula is a negative? What
if Matilda's apartment burns down while she's scratching the film on a surprise ticket? If finding a one million dollar winning ticket and returning to an intact apartment equals a
blessing, than surely finding a losing ticket and returning to a destroyed apartment equals an un-blessing.
God raised Matilda's hopes by delivering a lottery ticket, but dashed Matilda's
hopes when only two burlap bags imprinted with dollar signs revealed
themselves. Plus, god burnt down Matilda's house. Unlucky? No. Unblessed.
Remember the science adage: Every action has an equal and
opposite reaction. I think this should apply to the determination of blessings. If
a positive incident is proclaimed to be a blessing, an incident "equally
negative" should be proclaimed to be an un-blessing. (The same calculation
should be applied to luck, albeit the dramatic takeaway is lacking.)
If Matilda were not a theist, every incident--regardless of its likelihood--would be a measure of luck. Doesn’t that simply the equation immeasurably? And didn't your 5th grade math teacher always stress the importance of simplification?
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