Brighten Your Day

KA CLANG! KA CLANG! KA CLANG!

The old bell was ringing calling us to breakfast at 4-H camp. Several of us, however, weren't paying attention. It was the last day of camp and we were engaging in a tradition passed down for years. We were supposed to have stripped the sheets off of our beds in our cabins, stuff them into our pillow cases, and return them to the office before breakfast. Pillow cases filled with heavy sheets, though, were far better than pillows for an end of the week pillow fight. A dozen or more of us then were going at it when the bell started to ring. We were knocking each other over the beds and swinging our loaded down pillow cases with all of our might. A hit to the head stung like crazy but we didn't mind. We were having a rough housing good time.

Soon the pillow fight spilled out into the hallway of the second story of our cabin. A friend of mine and I were getting the worst of it. Several of the other boys had decided to gang up against us. I swung at one of them and missed and then saw another pillow case coming straight at my head. I ducked and it caught my friend full in the chest. Unfortunately, he was standing at the edge of the narrow stairway that led to the second floor. I looked around and saw that he was airborne, going backwards down the steps. He seemed about to crack his head wide open on the wooden steps when someone stripping their sheets on the first floor let their mattress fall on the bottom of the steps. My friend landed on the mattress and rolled safely off of it. The pillow fight stopped cold as we all gazed in amazement. "Whoa!," someone said. "What a lucky break!"

Looking back on that moment now I know that it wasn't just a lucky break. I am reminded again of what Albert Einstein once said: "Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous." So many of us these days focus on the times when something bad happens to us. We fail to see all of the times when something bad could have happened to us and miraculously didn't.

Without God's loving protection I doubt I would have survived my childhood. Without my guardian angels I would have been dead a dozen times over. That is why I know that there are no coincidences in this life. We are all watched over. We are all guided. We are all loved by Heaven above. Use your "lucky breaks" here well then. Don't waste a second of this precious time you are given. Live! Learn! Love! This life here is God's gift to you. Make how you live it your gift to God.