Coincidence??

When does a coincidence stop being a coincidence and just become something – well – something kid of spooky, in secular terms, or something more for those inclined to believe in more spiritual things. I had two such experiences, one year apart, and on this Easter Sunday it seems as good a time as any to write about them.

The first incident happened in early March of 2007. On Sunday night I was listening to “The Back Porch” on WVPE when Al Kniola played “On The Wings of a Dove” by some “local artists” from southern Michigan. It must have been late in the show because the next morning I awoke with the song still going around in my head. As I showered that morning I found myself singing, “… a sign from above / on the wings of a dove.” Toweling off I uttered out loud, “Gee, Lord, I wish you’d send ME a sign of some kind.” Just then I looked out the upstairs window towards my back yard and there was a Robin, the first one I had seen that year. “Close enough,” I said. “Close enough.”

I went downstairs and ate breakfast, then climbed back upstairs to brush my teeth and finish getting ready for work. As I passed the window in the hall at the top of the stairs I looked out again and there were now three Robins hopping around on the still brown lawn. Kind of on a spiritual roll I smiled to myself, shook my head and thought of the Trinity. So I went into the bathroom, began brushing my teeth and stepped back into the hall to watch the Robins. But, they were gone. In their place, pecking around at the hard ground was a single dove. Coincidence? I prefer to think not.

An even more unlikely event happened this morning while I was in church. I am reluctant to reveal the specific details because it involves some folks whose privacy I want to protect. And, maybe it is just too personal for this kind of forum. (I warned you about that in my very first post back on January 1, 2008). But suffice it to say that it involved someone I had not seen in at least 10 years, who lives two states away and who, to my knowledge, has never been in this particular church before. Simply seeing this person would in itself just have been a pleasant surprise. But, the impeccable timing of the appearance coupled with my thoughts at that exact moment is just too much to attribute to mere coincidence.

Every now and then things happen that I just cannot seem to attribute to simple providence. Call them what you will. But, in some sense, I find them to be faith-affirming for me.