Good Luck!

This is the very day (year) God acted. Let’s celebrate and be glad! Psalm 118:24 The Message

This year as I was preparing the traditional New Year’s meal of black eyed peas, collard greens, sweet potatoes, cornbread, and pork, I remembered what a friend of mine does to enhance luck for the new year. This friend takes a shiny new penny (which has been sanitized), wraps it tightly in a small piece of foil and adds it to the pot of black eyed peas. The one who finds it is supposedly gifted with good luck for the upcoming year. It’s funny that something that would seem so obvious to see in a pot of peas is actually extremely difficult to find.

Randy and I ate the entire meal and did not find the penny. I stored the left overs, and it wasn’t until our second meal that it showed up! We celebrated our good luck while secretly relieved that we hadn’t ingested it without our knowledge.

The days of winter are upon us, and sometimes we long for things in our lives that make us feel that we are destined for a year of good luck! The days are short, dark, and sometimes lonely for many of us. It seems like a long time until spring.

The time from Christmas break until spring break was the longest for teachers and students during my career. We didn’t have all the “breaks” that are the norm these days, so we had to be creative and make each day special. In order to help make each day special, we named the days of the week thusly: Marvelous Monday, Terrific Tuesday, Wonderful Wednesday, Thrilling Thursday, and Fun Friday! Just like the penny in the peas, sometimes our good luck is hidden amongt the routine, rut, and busyness of each new day. It is up to us to make the days special.

I enjoy making New Years resolutions, but Randy has decided that his resolution for the year is not to make resolutions. I think that the resolutions give us a chance to look back over the year, count our blessings, and resolve to live every day in this new year with a fresh look at the potential that lies before us. We get to view each day as a gift from God, and celebrate the fact that today is one of the most valuable gifts we will every receive. When we receive a gift, what do we do? We thank the giver, unwrap the gift, and enjoy it!

Many times we find excuses for not living up to the potential that the gift of each day can bring. We are much like the story of a man who put an eagle’s egg into the nest of a farmyard chicken. The eagle hatched and grew up with a brood of chickens. All his life he did what the chickens did; scratched in the dirt for seeds and insects, clucked and cackled, and never flew more than a few feet off the ground. One day he saw a magnificent bird soaring gracefully above him. He asked the chicken next to him, “What is that beautiful creature?” The chicken replied, “That’s and eagle, the king of all the birds. Don’t give him any mind because you could never be lucky enough to be like him.” So the eagle took the chicken’s word for it and went back to being a chicken.

Who other than God should tell us that we aren’t lucky enough to live up to our potential? Who has the right to tell us that we can’t succeed or make an impact in the lives of others? Instead of looking for good luck in this next year in a pot of black eyed peas, a four leaf clover, or a horseshoe, we should look for ways to fulfill our God given potential in this world. We can never get back the days or moments that we miss, so we need to celebrate every day in this life and the people that God has placed in our path. This year is to be enojoyed not dreaded or regretted.

We have already found our good luck for this year when we realize that God has given us the potential to do great things this coming year! We are destined for a great year because God is with us!