If there is one thing I know for sure in life, it is this:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS COINCIDENCE
Not a single moment, not a since chance meeting, not a single happenstance, not a single similarity, not a single bit. It’s as if God weaves an invisible thread through time, space, geography, and lives tying events and people together, as He weaves together a grand tapestry too big for our eyes to fully grasp.
Yet like a jigsaw puzzle, we intuitively (well, those who are intuitively aware) know that something more is at work here. Even disappointments in life are known as “divine appointments” if viewed through the lens of a different perspective, that is a mind that is higher than our own.
I personally know out of my deepest sorrows, the deepest joys were birthed. In times of abandonment, I found connection simply by being aware of the God who created me and those He works through as he introduced them to me. The core of who I most truly am started as a simple seed (that which my heart most truly desires). It was planted and took root down low in the dirt. Then it was watered with tears. Yet now it is shooting up and starting to bloom with buds that when opened bring me incredible joy and occasionally even others!
So I’ve learned some things as I’ve matured. Nothing and no one God puts on your path is random. We may not quite get the connection, but God does. It’s up to us to seek God’s wisdom as we assimilate our experiences, to go with the flow, and hopefully not unravel or knot-tie what God has designs on.
Here’s a perfect example of how nothing is coincidence; all things are connected: (And this happens to me repeatedly in life, I could write a dozen pages, but will refrain as our time is valuable.)
Tuesday I was at my friend Rebecca’s home. On her refrigerator was a picture of a mom. I said, “Hey, how do you know Julie?” She replied, “That’s not Julie, that’s my cousin Rachel.”
“Well she looks exactly like my friend Julie! But I see now that it is not because there are different kids in the picture. Well, everybody has a twin!” I say.
I think to myself, I should send a Facebook message to my friend Julie and tell her she has a twin on this earth, but I get busy that night so I don’t. The next day, I kid you not, I run into Julie at the library.
“Oh my gosh!” I tell her. “I was just thinking of you last night!” I tell Julie the story of my friend Rebecca who has a near carbon copy photo of her on her refrigerator. She chuckles, and we talk about other things. She tells me she may be moving to my neighborhood because that just so happens to be where Julie’s in laws live, and they may be combining homes due to aging parent concerns.
So we talk about that for a while. Then she talks about her brother in law who sometimes gets a ride to church from a friend in my neighborhood named Dan. She can’t remember his last name. I tell her the only Dan I know is Dan Allen. And she says, “Right! That’s the same one.”
WHAT?!?! I say in awe. Well Dan Allen is the husband of my friend Rebecca (are you following me still?) who has the twin picture of Julie on her refrigerator. “No way!” Julie says.
Not only is the world getting smaller, but it just shrunk twice, right before our very eyes.
By now our conversation has drifted with our walking out of the library and towards a playground where our kids can play together for a while. She tells me that tomorrow she plans to take her kids to the zoo. WHOA! Wait a dog gone minute I say! I had just made plans that morning to take my kid to the zoo tomorrow too!
Today I did go to the zoo. I don’t know if Julie went as it rained so hard, it was basically a monsoon, but still the coincidences were so….well, connecting!
But wait there is more! Julie used to have a neighbor named Rob. Two years ago, Rob was giving away a stray cat he had become attached to but couldn’t keep. So I met Rob through Julie due to a plea she made on Facebook while trying to help Rob who was desperate to find a home for his cat. This is how I got my cat Toby who is now part of our family.
So a few months ago my mother-in-law breaks her leg. She returns home from the hospital and needs intensive physical therapy. She has a great therapist she tells us about as she learns new exercises each week. Well, after eight weeks or so, as he wraps up his visits with her, he spots a photograph on her dresser.
“Is that Liz?” he asks her. On her dresser, Rob had spotted a photo of me taken almost 30 years ago when I married my husband. (How did he even recognize me?) “Yes it is,” she replies, “Liz is my daughter in law.” “Well Liz adopted a cat of mine that I could no longer keep when I got married a year ago.”
And you could take it even further still. Where did I meet Julie? At our church. About thirty years after we went to the same middle school together.
Maybe you chalk up these encounters as coincidence! I do not. I believe in “seeing thru a glass darkly.” If we do not understand these connections that are good, friendly, or amusing, how much more can we not understand that which connects and binds us to one another in hurtful, disappointing, or destructive ways?
I am not excusing bad behavior or random acts of harm or disappointment that none of us are immune to. I only know there is always more than meets the eye. There is more to hear than our ears find audible. There is more to grasp than our minds can understand.
We can’t make sense of our lives if we rely only on our own understanding. But when we rely on God, the bigger picture becomes more in focus, the fine details are sharpened, and life becomes vivid, clearer, brighter, and yes–happier.
I believe we gain wisdom as we become more intuitive. And we gain that intuition, as we deepen our faith. In becoming wiser and more intuitive, we also learn to appreciate the people God introduces to us as well as circumstances and coincidences God allows to happen. We start to realize they too have a place, a season, and a purpose in our life as well.
Why did you even read this far? Maybe it was just coincidence. Perhaps–or maybe it really was something more.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV)
As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9 (NIV)
As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man. Proverbs 27:19 (ESV)
u2areloved 