Lucky in Love

As I listen and pray this Lenten season between Valentines Day and St. Patricks Day, God has given me this phrase “lucky in love” to ponder. First, what does it mean to be lucky? I have been told in Bible Study classes along the way that if your faithful you don’t need luck. Well, okay, but even faithful people can be lucky! Christians are not excluded from chance, fate and providential good fortune. We are allowed to receive the happiness and joy that comes without our working for it. I have been wondering this Lent if sometimes luck comes…when we submit to being totally faithful. I am thinking that perhaps in the midst of totally depending on God that we can allow ourselves to receive anything and many things that come our way by chance, rather than through our own actions.

On-line dating sites come to mind as I have been hearing of more and more positive matches occurring. Is it that the sites are refining their methods? Are these people just lucky? Should Christians use these sites at all? Why do we always need answers and justification for happiness?

Jesus was the champion of random meetings and I believe he models for us the opportunity to embrace luck as a tool for transformation – maybe even salvation for some of us!

When luck comes to love, people go quickly toward judgement, skepticism and sarcasm. If you’re married you are automatically perceived as lucky in love. Yet, many people, men and women, live in silent fear with decades of abuse. “You have to have more faith, be more obedient, try harder,” – this “counsel” has been offered often to Christian couples whose struggles and pain are not being truly acknowledged. God does not bless abuse! God’s continual presence is our hope that as we human beings journey and change, fall short, discover and risk we are not damned. God creates us once and then joins with us as we participate in daily re-creation of ourselves.  God wants each step of growth to be joy-filled, safe, healthy and life-giving. Note: God’s presence does not imply any guarantee of “ease” in this journey.

I believe that the expression, time heals, is true. However, with God, the way healing presents and opens us up can be quite by chance. You already know that Lent is my favorite liturgical season. Lent has also become a lucky time for me. As I have faithfully given myself to disciplines of care for my body, mind and spirit I have heard call, risked honesty,  lost weight, gained friends and this year I am realizing just how lucky in love, I am. I am learning that tears can turn to laughter, that relationships evolve, that endings and beginnings can both be grace-filled and that trusting God’s loving presence through community (the church) is not a blessing in disguise but rather a gift to open and use.

Friends, change is hard, realities are sometimes a surprise, and yes, even Christians can be lucky. God is the giver of ALL good, ALL the time, to ALL who will submit to opening their hands and hearts to God’s love. As we continue this Lenten journey toward the cross and empty tomb are you willing, as one of God’s own, to submit to being lucky in love?

Let it be so.

Peace be to each of you,

~ Pastor Kelly