Chance and providence

Dan Edelen looks at the problem of those who follow the rules and yet suffer for it:

And that’s a troubling reality to me that I’ve never quite been able to reconcile either in my own life or in the lives of others. The Bible speaks to this conundrum in what I find to be one of the most inscrutable verses in the Bible:

Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.

—Ecclesiastes 9:11

In other words, you may do it all right and yet still fail for reasons outside of your control. Just like Commodore Decker. You may try to recover, but chance so dashed your jigsaw puzzle and trashed its pieces that the final image is irretrievably lost.

It's a very thought-provoking article. And not only does Dan raise some important questions about Christian discipleship, he does so with a strong reference to Star Trek.