A few years ago, I spit in a vial and mailed my saliva to a DNA ancestry company to determine my melting-pot pedigree.  Apparently, I am 20% Irish. Yay! With such an enviable heritage, I feel qualified to write about the luck of the Irish. The only problem is–I don’t believe in luck.

The on-line Cambridge Dictionary defines “luck” as “the force that causes things, especially good things, to happen to you by chance and not as a direct result of your own efforts or abilities.”

1. What we call “luck” might be the fruit of human effort.

Despite what the dictionary says, sometimes the word “luck” is applied to consequences that are the direct result of one’s own actions. If a student studies hard for a test and receives a good grade, her jealous–and less industrious–classmates might write off her success as “good luck.” Instead, I suspect that preparation, not chance, carried the day. Scientist Louis Pasteur nodded at this idea when he said, “Fortune favors the prepared mind.”

2. But human effort and ability can’t always predict results.

We’ve all observed how an element outside human control can affect an outcome. The writer of Ecclesiastes 9:11 sums it up best:

“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise,
nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill;
but time and chance happeneth to them all.” (KJV)

What the writer of Ecclesiastes calls “time” and “chance,” others might call “bad luck” for those who failed and “good luck” for those who succeeded.  Regardless, all of these terms refer to results unaccounted for by human effort. I attribute these result to divine intervention or influence.

3. Ultimately, everything falls under the providence of God.

Countless Bible stories illustrate how the Lord takes faith and a little human effort and blesses it exponentially. Thus, the young shepherd boy David defeated the warrior giant Goliath with a slingshot (I Samuel 17). Thus, Gideon and 300 men, armed only with trumpets and jars, overcame the immeasurable Midianite army (Judges 7). Thus, a motley crew of disciples “turned the world upside down” for Jesus (Acts 17:6).

4. If not “luck,” then what caused the Irish to succeed?

In his book, 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Irish American History, Edward T. O’Donnell, an Associate Professor of History at Holy Cross College, writes:

“During the gold and silver rush years in the second half of the 19th century, a number of the most famous and successful miners were of Irish and Irish American birth… Over time this association of the Irish with mining fortunes led to the expression ‘luck of the Irish.’ Of course, it carried with it a certain tone of derision, as if to say, only by sheer luck, as opposed to brains, could these fools succeed.”

No doubt the successful Irish miners did back-breaking work, and they persevered.  But their strength and energy to work came from God.

Some miners found silver and gold; others did not. But who created ore minerals in the first place? The Lord did.

I don’t believe in luck. I believe in the goodness and sovereignty of God. Besides, who else could store my entire genetic code in a little bit of spit?