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.
For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them. (Ecclesiastes 9:11-12 ESV)
The truth of the above statement by Solomon is illustrated by the story of the WWII B-24 bomber Lady Be Good. Lady Be Good and her crew went on their first bombing run to the coast of Italy from their base in Libya in north Africa. On their way back, they became disoriented, thought they had encountered a head wind which would put them over the Mediterranean Sea when actually they were flying into the Sahara Desert. Running out of fuel, they bailed out when they were 440 miles from their home base. Lacking good maps of that area and not knowing precisely where they were, they started to walk north. Having little food and water, they made less than 100 miles toward their goal before they succumbed to the desert. [1]
What did the crew of Lady Be Good do to deserve such a fate? Did God ordain that they perish in this manner? Or does the day we die and how we die depend upon “time and chance”? They were caught up in a war they did not start. They were very inexperienced with the aircraft they were flying and with the territory in which they were flying. And it cost them their lives.
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[1] Dennis E. McClendon. The Lady Be Good. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: TAB/AERO Books, Inc., 1962.
