By: Larry Young
The longer I live and the older I get, the more convinced I am that there may not be such a thing as a true coincidence. The ways that things happen can be incredible and unplanned, but that may not make them coincidences. Think about it for a moment: when you pray for someone or for something to happen, haven’t you just turned over the outcome to God? And if God answered your prayer in some way and at some time, weren’t there a “set of coincidences” that lined up to make that happen? Like Stephen Bohr said from our pulpit not long ago, God is the “ultimate chess master”, outsmarting even the most extreme efforts of the devil to counteract His will and to stop God from delivering on His promises.
I lost a tiny key lock spring on my driveway (strewn with wood shavings) smaller than one sliver of wood. After abandoning my futile search, I asked God where it was, but got no answer till the next day. My daughter Deanna came down some stairs about 20 feet away. She suddenly stopped and bent down, picking up the spring: “Hey dad, what is this?” Coincidence? Not a chance.
I was on short leave in the Navy in San Diego and bought a maple bar donut at Winchells. I got back on a jet to Scotland and resumed duty on my nuclear submarine. Half a year later, I returned to San Diego and bought another Winchells maple bar donut. A girl walked in at that very moment and took one look at me, and recalled the very clothes I had worn half a year earlier and the car I had driven. Coincidence? No way. So I married her, my awesome wife, Cheryl.
Anyone who says that God has abandoned them obviously can’t see the forest in front of the trees. God is constantly lining up circumstances to benefit us and to optimize our decisions for salvation and to be witnesses for Him. There’s no bottom to the depth nor complexity that God can’t go to on your
behalf. God’s only self-limitation is to not trample on your power of choice.
Does it take a bullet whizzing through your ear by a would-be-assassin to get your attention? For many of us, myself included, it does! Start looking at all the coincidences or “acts of God” you see surrounding your life and get a glimpse of what God is doing day and night to try to save each one of us from ourselves…and to walk with Him! Consider the poem titled “Footprints in the Sand”: “One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Scenes from my life flashed across the sky. In each, I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints; other times there was only one. During the low periods of my life, I could see only one set of footprints, so I said, “You promised me, Lord, that you would walk with me always. Why, when I have needed you most, have you not been there for me?” The Lord replied, “The times when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.” For me and my wife Cheryl, recent days have been those where there have been only one set of footprints. How about you?