In Virginia there lived a man named Roy Sullivan. He was struck by lightning seven times. I’m told the rough odds of this happening are 1.6 x 10 to the 25th (sixteen septillion). Which is like one man winning the lotto four times, though the luck is of a different stripe.

…After the fourth time Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning, he allegedly told a reporter that a higher power was trying to kill him.

 That’s ridiculous. A higher power was not trying to kill him. That would have been easy. Every last one of us is bagged in the end. The more impressive trick is striking someone with lightning seven times and keeping them alive.

 Have you ever had something so annoying happen, something so impossibly coincidental, that you know there must be a God, and that He must be laughing? Do you want to be the character in the movie who can't take a joke, who can't laugh at the awkward, at the uncomfortable? Worse, the character who can't laugh at himself?

 If you discover one morning (with moist toes) that the toilet bowl has been covered with plastic wrap, do you deny the existence of your roommate?

 Ask yourself this question: who invented your roommate, and decided to give him a role (along with certain impulses and sensibilities) in your life? Complain. Whine. Be a fusser. The story needs those as well, because every butt needs a joke, and the audience must laugh. Whether they (and God) laugh at or with is up to you.

N. D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl