Time and chance

“Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it’s enemy action.” Google AI had this to say about these words: “This famous quote comes from Ian Fleming's 1959 James Bond novel, Goldfinger. It is spoken by the villain Auric Goldfinger to Bond to explain that while mishaps can happen by chance, a third occurrence implies intentional, deliberate action by an enemy.

• Meaning: It serves as a rule of thumb for identifying patterns, suggesting that one instance is a fluke, two might be coincidence, but three indicates a deliberate plan or threat.”

I vaguely recall reading the quote at the start of this blog as part of the novel in the mid 1960’s. The story hasn’t stayed with me but the quoted words have. They are certainly an interesting perspective on when something happening by chance transitions to something deliberate.

Here’s some words from God’s Bible which offer another perspective on ‘chance’ happenings:

“I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.” (Ecclesiastes 9:11-12 NIV)

Yes, ‘bad luck’ and sometimes worse, does happen to everyone. Sometimes with serious or even fatal consequences. How blessed we are then that God has promised a future with no happenstance, no coincidence, no enemy action, no chance and without the restriction of time (we all have a limited time don’t we, in this era). The replacement for all of these things and more is total perfection, everywhere, forever. The details are all in God’s word to us, His Bible.