A new thought seeped into my sensibilities;

It had to do with the nature of the gods.

All are slaves of implacable predictabilities,

Excepting Him who is free from all mathematical odds.

Gods and demigods fill earth and sky,

And all are as predictable as nature that plods,

Frozen in the grasp of rigid formulae,

While He stands free—and can always beat the odds.

Nature rules them, as He rules nature; they never lived, He never did not.

No other has ever been able to so much as nod;

They neither wish nor will nor want nor work—did not, do not, can not.

But the living God rules the cosmos and is never subject to the odds.

BY HIS LIVING PRESENCE…

   Noah beat the hydraulic odds

   Moses beat the slavery odds

   David beat the military odds

   The widow of Zarephath beat the famine odds

   Amos beat the pedigree odds

   Naaman beat the disease odds

   Lazarus beat the decomposition odds

   Paul beat the religious odds

   Mary beat the biology odds

   Her Son beat the mortality odds

   And—miracle of miracles—you and I beat the condemnation odds!

What are the odds, one asks,

That of a billion empires only one shall last?

When the earth explodes

And the cosmos implodes

When galaxies become dust

And stars collapse in a rush,

When all sovereignties, kings and queens—

Occidental, oriental, past, present, and as yet unseen—

When they each and all disappear leaving no trace,

That one and only one kingdom will stand in their place?  

That sole supremacy, towering eternally over all historical odds

Belongs to the King of all kings, the God of all gods—

The God who has, does, and will—beat all the odds!

Bill Anderson

Grapevine, Texas