Lucky by Glenn Packiam

Glenn Packiam's new book, Lucky: How the Kingdom Comes to Unlikely People, joins the ranks of his two other books Secondhand Jesus: Trading Rumors of God for a Firsthand Faith and Butterfly in Brazil: How Your Life Can Make a World of Difference. In this book, Glenn unpacks the context of the word blessed in Luke's depiction of the beatitudes, Luke 6.20-23. The English translation uses the word blessed, but Glenn says that Jesus didn't use a religious word, he chose a street word that had the idea of the good, fortunate, or as Glenn says of a word we might be more likely to choose, lucky. The hard part for me in reading this book and even some now as I write this review is getting passed thinking of lucky as random or chance. Even if I can't help myself from thinking that, I think about why we're lucky, and it's because of God and nothing that He does is random or chance. The poor, hungry, sad, and persecuted people that Jesus was talking about are ones that you wouldn't consider as being the lucky ones, but they were exactly the ones that Jesus sought after and wanted to spend time with. Glenn says this,

"Jesus took an inherently nonreligious word, a word from normal, everyday, conversations, and filled it with divine implications. It turns out the ones we ought to call 'lucky' are the ones that God is blessing with the arrival of His kingdom. In doing this, Jesus redefined who the lucky ones are. They are not the ones culture lauds as successful, not the ones we secretly aspire to be. He turned our appraisal of the good life on its head. There is a great reversal that is coming; indeed, it has already begun. And the ones who are receiving and participating in the kingdom of God are the ones who are truly lucky, deeply blessed."

Where this really begins to hit home is when I, and you, begin to think of how much an unlikely person I am to be receiving the kingdom of God. But because of the death and resurrection of Christ, we have become rich through Him, He satisfies our hunger through time with Him and His Word, we need not weep because we have strength in His joy, and no matter what happens in our life on this earth we have a treasure awaiting us in heaven. As we come to realize that we are the lucky ones, at the end of the book, Glenn challenges us to become the luck-bearers. Because the kingdom has come to us it can go through us to others.

• Lucky are the God-dependent, for they will enjoy and participate in God's rule.
• Lucky are those who are empty on this world, for they will be filled with Jesus and feast with Him in the age to come.
• Lucky are those whose best life is not now, for what is coming is better than what is.
• Lucky are those who are rejected by the world, for they are a threat to it and their reward is from a kingdom not of this world.

Special thanks to The B & B Media Group, Inc. and David C. Cook for providing this complimentary book to read and review. You can purchase the book here on amazon.com.