It's Not Luck, It's Answered Prayer

I don't believe in luck. In order to believe in luck, someone has to acknowledge that there is both good and bad luck. Those who have good luck have the leg-up on those with bad luck. Those with bad luck might as well be cursed. That's a simple explanation for why I don't believe in luck. There's a lot more than just that, but that's not what I am writing about.

Because I don't believe in luck, when good things happen, I attribute them to another source. I believe in a merciful, loving God, who hears and answers prayers - often in ways we don't foresee, understand or can explain. The scriptures say that "every good and perfect gift comes from God," so when something good happens to me or those around me, I try to remember to say an audible "thank you" to Him for it.

With that in mind, I want to share something that happened today and say a thank you to God for His protection and providence.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been trying to get my son's car in to get an oil change. It was well overdue. Well, I finally was able to get it in today. As we were leaving, the tech told us we needed to check the serpentine belt because it looked like it was "split" and was in terrible shape. I cautioned Chris for his drive home to not do anything out of the ordinary. When I got home, we picked up another belt and got ready to install it. Of course, we had to take off the old one in order to install the new one. When we took the old one off, this is what it looked like:

I would venture to say that when this car belonged to my parents, they probably never changed the belt, which was why it was in the condition we found it in. You can see from the pics that the belt was literally falling apart. Yet, somehow it didn't. Was it luck? Some might say so. I can't.

Every morning, when my kids leave for school, I say a quick prayer "God, protect my kids." So we find out today that they had been driving a car with fan belt in that bad of a condition. They had been driving with it like that for quite some time. Is it a coincidence that we happened to find out about the belt before it broke and left my kids stranded somewhere along the road? Maybe. I suppose that people could see it as a coincidence. I don't. I believe that God intervened somehow and caused that rotten fan belt to keep from falling apart until it could be found and replaced.

It's nice to know that the God who cares for sparrows, as well as people, also cares about kids driving old cars with old, worn out parts and keeping those kids from being stranded until their cars can be repaired. Thank you, God.