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