When things go our way, we tend to think of ourselves as lucky. When things do not go our way, we think of ourselves as unlucky. A recent column in Flying magazine puts a different perspective on this issue.
Peter Garrison designed and built his airplane which he flew across the Pacific so it is obvious he is an accomplished aviator. In 1982 as he was holding short of a runway, another propeller driven aircraft ran into his aircraft and proceeded to chew his airplane into pieces. Fortunately, Mr. Garrison was able to escape. When the news media arrived on the scene, one reporter asked Mr. Garrison if he felt lucky. That seemed like an odd question to Mr. Garrison because he had just lost his aircraft into which he had invested so much of his life and he thought that was very unlucky. However, Mr. Garrison recognized that from the reporter’s perspective, he had survived an airplane accident and to survive such an accident obviously one must be lucky. [1]
So was Mr. Garrison lucky or unlucky? That all depends upon your perspective. This particular event had aspects of both—Mr. Garrison was lucky he escaped with his life but he was unlucky he lost his airplane.
As Christians we can learn from this story. While we are confident that ultimately “all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28, ESV), even in our present circumstances we should recognize that there are good and bad aspects to what we experience in our lives. Whether we see the positive or negative is just a matter of our perspective.
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[1] Peter Garrison. Technicalities: “Random Acts of Luckiness”. Flying, December 2018, pp. 68-69.
