Growing up with a mom that worked had its advantages. The biggest advantage I had was in the summer. I got to stay home by myself. We moved into a newly built house around my 12th birthday. Mom went to work each morning and I stayed by myself. I was a shy kid so I stayed indoors mostly. I watched a lot of TV at first. But did you know TV can get boring?

I did get to choose what I watched though. In those days there were the network TV channels and living in the St. Louis area, we received two independent channels as well. Fortunately for me, The Price Is Right was on every weekday. It was a game show at least. Game shows were a million times better than the endless array of soap operas that took up most of the network channels daytime slots. Bob Barker and I became friends, if you can call it that.

The Price Is Right is a long lasting game show that has survived the change of hosts. Contestants win based on their ability to correctly price different things. Some of the games they play have withstood the test of time. One of them is called Plenko. Plenko is a game based totally on luck. First, by guessing the price of some common things, you can win up to five Plenko chips. Next comes the total luck part. Plenko is a board about eight feet by eight feet with hundreds of different posts in it and covered by Plexiglas so you can watch the chip fall on its way to the bottom. The contestant goes to the top and picks a place to start his chip on its random way to the bottom where it gets dumped into winning places labeled with various amounts of money. If you are among the very lucky, your chip can descend down its path and land in the only $10,000 winning slot. Of course, everyone in the crowd cheers for the chip on its randomly jerky way to the bottom. The chip bounces from post to post each time getting a little closer to the bottom and hopefully, for the contestant, to the big money.

Is life just like each Plenko chip? Does God stand at the top and randomly drop a life and let everything in our life be determined by chance? Is there really luck in the world? I think a loving, benevolent God would take a more hands-on approach. God would want to take care of His creation and give the best things He could. Just like any parent here would. If God isn’t a leave-us-alone god, then He is helping us to connect with Him and live for Him in the best way possible for us. And that is something special! Each one of us has a loving Father God watching over us and helping us! What could be better! Isn’t that better than just being an old Plenko chip?