Luck and Love

Players of many dice-based role-playing games occasionally personify the dice. For example, when we get lucky rolls, we sometimes say that the dice are in a good mood, or that they like us. Experiencing a streak of especially good luck in real life, I commented that "the dice must love us," and then explained to Mom that that means that we were lucky. She then reminded me that "lucky" is another way of saying "blessed," so I corrected myself. We weren't lucky because the dice loved us; we were blessed because God loves us.

Interestingly, though, God's love for us never changes, even though our luck does. Sometimes, we are given more blessings, sometimes less, but that doesn't mean that God doesn't love us any less when we're blessed less. Jesus Christ temporarily had to go without the blessings of peace and comfort, but that wasn't because God loved Him less then than He had before.

Sometimes, God withholds blessings from us so we can grow from negative experiences because He loves us enough to want us to reach our full potential. Sometimes, God withholds blessings from us so He can grant us even better blessings later because He loves us enough to want to give us the very best. When what seems like misfortune causes us to miss out on some of the blessings we had hoped for, we must remember that that doesn't mean that God doesn't love us. It means that God loves us enough to give us something even better than what we wanted.

God's love is not fickle. Nor is it's manifestations determined by anything as random as a throw of the dice. God's love for us is infinite and eternal. It is constant and unchangeable. And it's effects are manifested in a perfect plan set for our ultimate happiness. I am coming to believe that there is no such thing as luck, but rather that everything that seems random is all part of God's plan.

Now, I don't know how exactly God's plan affects the roll of the dice at a D&D table. Those rolls seem to be completely random. Honestly, I'm not sure God cares about those die rolls enough to influence their fates one way or the other. Maybe they are complete random. Or maybe God does care, for reasons that are beyond me, and influences the die rolls in ways that I don't understand.

One thing I do understand is that the dice do not truly have emotions or preferences or any will of their own. The dice do not determine their numbers based on how they "feel" about me because they have no feelings at all. My dice do not love me. My God does.