Coincidences

A series of three interesting events caught my attention this month. The first was that I received an email from a good friend with whom I had not spoken in quite a while. In it she wrote how she recently had a couple of dreams and remarked that oftentimes we simply dismiss dreams without a thought, when on the other hand we freely confess that God often spoke through dreams in the Bible, and could do so today. The evening after I received this email, I happened to drive one of the senior youth home after bible study, and this high school student confided in me about a disturbing dream and asked if God could be trying to say something in it. I was taken aback a bit, and admitted that although the dream could just be random, that by praying about it and asking God for his direction, He would be faithful and dispel any fear of the future.

The second sequence of events, though less striking, kept me thinking. That next weekend, on Valentine's Day, I was babysitting a few nieces and nephews and was unable to get a call through to my fiancée, despite trying my international phone card for twenty minutes. The next morning I called again, even though she should have already left for a week long trip and been out of range of her cell service. Yet she picked up and related to me how she had temporarily lost her passport and so missed the first train to Poland, and I had called just fifteen minutes before she left on the later connection.

Later that morning, I met up with my little brother who had just returned from training in the Marines. In showing off a few moves before we left to visit our sister's church, he landed on his left side and injured his foot. We were running late and our host ran ahead to make up time, but my brother could only hobble along behind. But towards the end of the service, the somewhat charismatic pastor asked anyone who wished that they come forward for prayer. After a few minutes he said, among a couple other ailments, that he felt he should pray for someone's left foot. Though my brother, himself a strong Christian, did not go forward for prayer, he said afterwards that at that moment his foot no longer hurt. And after the service he was able to easily walk--though not yet run--on it.

Granted, some of these could be explained as chance happenings, but I do believe God works in today's world. Whether these things occurred independently so that a high schooler could be encouraged to pray, that I could talk to my fiancée a last time before a week with little contact, and that a Marine's foot could be sound for his time of reconnecting with friend and family, or for some other hidden reasons. I do not know. Or perhaps it was to remind a young engineer that though this world is defined by known and very definite physical laws, its Creator still holds it in His hands and has a very real plan for it. And a very real plan for me.

Steve