Good Grief!

Everyone has a memory of a time, a person, a place in their life that is wonderful. For them it was like living in their ideal world. In this life "all good things come to an end" as the saying goes. So when that good moment is gone, there is a sadness because their good experience has died. The person has suffered a loss and they are naturally grieving for it. From that point on, their life may not seem the same, without spark, only very ordinary, routine and dull. They remember the good times with sadness because they seem to have lost them forever.

The Bible teaches that God has placed eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:10-12). We all know there is something better than this - when we have an amazing experience, we want to hold on to it forever but we cannot in this life. But what if these good moments in our lives were only a foretaste of the things to come? God uses these experiences to create a longing within us for what he has actually prepared ahead for us if we will believe and trust him.

These good memories in your life are merely a picture, a taste of all that God has planned for you (1 Corinthians 2:9). We therefore do not need to feel sad but can rejoice instead for what lies ahead. This is the promise that God has given, the Gospel that I have passed on to you.

The Lottery

Anyone remember the “Good Old Days”? You know the days when the All Blacks actually won the World Cup? 1987. Two years after the Rainbow Warrior was sunk by the French, we got them back. Sweet Justice.

 

It was later that same year the World Stock Market crashed, so if we’re going to win this year, be warned! The All Blacks are 7/4 odds on favourites to win. I’m just saying. The Lottery of Life. I’m going to tell you about a man named Frane Selak, probably the luckiest man alive.

Frane Selak was born in Croatia in 1929 – coincidentally the year of the previous great World Stock Market crash. Frane is like the proverbial cat with nine lives, famous for his number of escapes from fatal accidents. 

The first of his numerous near-death experiences was on a cold January day in 1962, when Frane was on a train to Dubrovnik: it suddenly derailed into an icy river, killing 17 passengers. He managed to escape with a broken arm, minor scratches and bruises.

A year later, Frane was flying, from Zagreb to Rijeka, when a door abruptly blew away from the cockpit of the plane, as he was blown off the plane! The accident killed 19 people, however, Frane was lucky enough to land on a haystack, and wake up some days later in hospital, with minor injuries.

It was in 1966 that he met with the third misadventure while traveling on a bus that crashed and plunged into a river. There were four people dead. Astonishingly, Frane managed to escape unharmed again.

In 1970, Frane was driving along when, all of a sudden, his car caught fire. He was fortunate again to have left the car before the fuel tank exploded. 

Three years later, another of Frane's car caught fire, blowing flames through the air vents. There is no mention in the story whether anyone was travelling in the car with him. Probably not I'd say!

In 1995, Frane was in Zagreb when he was hit by a bus, again leaving nothing but a few injuries. 

The following year, while driving through a mountain road, Frane drove off a guardrail to escape an oncoming truck and landed on a tree to watch his car explode 300 feet below.

Someone must have told Frane to buy a lottery ticket. You guessed it, in 2003, Frane won the million-dollar Croatian lottery turning him into either the world's unluckiest man, or the world's luckiest one depending on whether you are a glass half-empty or half-full kind of person!

We live in a world where random things happen to everyone – the good, the bad and the ugly. A wise man in the Bible once observed “¹¹ I have seen something else under the sun:  The race is not to the swift  or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favour to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. ¹² Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.” Ecclesiastes 9:11-12

We all would like security in our lives, not just to rely on dumb luck to get us through. God has made a promise to take care of us and give eternal life to anyone who will believe in Jesus, and he cannot lie. He is the only one who can deliver on a promise – everything else is chance. Take his Word for it.