When I was paying for items in a store recently, the cashier offered me a coupon that she said might win me some valuable prizes. I politely refused the coupon and told the cashier that if I thought good luck could help me, I also might believe bad luck could harm me.

As we all know, luck can fluctuate from one extreme to the other, apparently helpful in one instance, damaging at another. So—in everyone's best interests—we should never think of leaving anything to chance.

Chance implies the possibility that something can happen unpredictably. And it does seem that unexpected, even terrible things happen to people every day. Yet the Bible is filled with reassuring promises and evidences that God is ever available to help us. Even more, it points to the fact that God is the one supremely good power; in fact, the only real power.

Someone might ask, "If this is so, then how do you explain all the accidents we read about? They certainly do not indicate the government of a caring, intelligent God."

Christian Scientists would certainly agree that they do not. But instead of blaming God, Christian Science says that the need is to gain a better understanding of reality—a clearer realization of what God actually is, what man really is, and how we can more fully demonstrate God's constant care. When an accident happens, God is not "off duty." But it may mean that there is a need to challenge even more diligently a material view of life, which makes us liable to chance. Our need is to grow in our individual understanding of God's universal care and unerring dominion, and to bring our thought and action into accord with His government. These efforts bring safety. How do we do this?

Christian Science teaches that there are not two bases of existence, one material and another spiritual. The spiritual alone is real. God, Spirit, is expressing all perfection and maintaining intelligent control throughout His universal creation. In this realm, which is man's true home, there is no fortuitous action, nothing left to chance. No link exists between divine control and chance or luck.

As God's expression, man is not a double image—one spiritual and the other material, one secure and another buffeted by chance. There is only one real man—the perfect, immortal man of divine Mind's creating. The supposedly physical man, subject to the wheel of chance, is the human mind's mistaken sense of true entity, which Christian Science helps us to correct. Our true individuality as God's spiritual idea is immune from every claim of chance. The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes, "If God be changeless goodness, ... what place has chance in the divine economy?" ^{Unity of Good, p. 26.}

Although chance has no place in the spiritually real, it does claim to have its prescribed role in the material sense of things. Does this mean we leave harmony to heaven and submit to chance on earth? No. In his healing works Christ Jesus proved God, divine Principle, to be the ever-present cause of all right action on earth as in heaven. On this basis he healed the sick and the dying. Jesus demanded that all should live in accord with the spiritual reality that underlay his healing works. He said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." ^{Matt. 5:48.}

Through Christian Science we bring our individual experience into line with the intent and disposal of God's intelligent action. Wherever the reality of God's allness and love predominates in human consciousness we find chance and the effects of mishap yielding to spiritual truth, so that physical restoration and well-being naturally follow. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mrs. Eddy clarifies and confirms: "Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind, and we must leave the mortal basis of belief and unite with the one Mind, in order to change the notion of chance to the proper sense of God's unerring direction and thus bring out harmony." ^{Science and Health, p. 424.}

The continuing search for security has often led mankind down the byways of luck and chance, from gold rushes, to gambling on market futures, to lotteries. No more money troubles, people suppose! Yet it is generally agreed that a material windfall cannot guarantee happiness. It certainly cannot bring freedom from the negative possibilities of the belief in chance—unlucky encounters, mishaps, distress, loss.

It is when we see that the channels of chance can never be the source of genuine, lasting good that our trust in God's unseen yet certain guidance and provision grows stronger. Through Science we learn to trust in divine Mind as the only real source of human satisfaction. Then we find our needs being met in practical ways commensurate with our understanding of God's sustaining providence. As Science and Health assures us: "In divine Science, man is sustained by God, the divine Principle of being." ^{Ibid., p. 530.}

As God's spiritual dominion becomes increasingly apparent within our affairs, our human experience will naturally become more peaceful, stable, and secure. Acceptance of Love's dominion will quell stressful urges pleading for us to "try our luck." We will feel the temptations of chance and luck recede as we know that we are right now the sons and daughters of the living God, having all, and untouched by speculative gambling enticements.

In the Science of Christ, the understanding that man's needs are already met throughout eternity shields us from shaky, unwise involvements. Instead of chance we find God's orderly and joyful way of comfort, supply, and happiness. We are freed from the manipulation that goes hand in glove with unprincipled risks. We learn to feel God's shepherding protection as unmistakable spiritual intuition guarding us from precarious ventures and risk taking.

To the degree we live in accord with the demands of perfect spiritual being, we are allied with that Mind which upholds the universe in accident-free precision. We have no need for raffled prizes, lotteries, good luck, or chance. We already have the inexhaustible riches of the kingdom of heaven within us—at hand to draw upon and to share with all around us.