We bumped into each other at the coffee pot, both reaching for the same Styrofoam cup. I yielded, deferring to his seniority.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?”
This can be a dangerous question. It can mean I’ve either met the person and forgotten who he/she is, or this is a person whom I’ve not met but should have known anyway.
Scanning his facial features, trying to connect the image with a memory, I drew a blank. Thankfully, he explained. It turned out, I knew his family and had known of him through them.
We immediately connected and became friends.
“Coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous,” he later said, referring to our rather inauspicious introduction.
It’s a quote attributed to Albert Einstein.
I like what my colleague at Campbellsville University, Professor John Hurtgen, once said. I teasingly mentioned that God had “led” me to call him, as it turned out, at a most propitious time. “God is always active,” he said. “Sometimes we see it; sometimes we don’t.” It reminds me to keep my eyes open. God is in what we call “coincidences” because He is always on the move. I have to look for Him in what I think are unimportant events.
Think of the incidences in your life joined together like pearls on a string. Unhook one, and the whole strand of precious events falls to the ground, unraveled. You could end up somewhere else with someone else. At least to a degree, you would be a different person.
A young man named D.L. Moody was working in a shoe store when his Sunday School teacher visited. It was a slow day at the store, so the teacher, Edward Kimball, shared the gospel with Moody, who accepted Christ. Moody eventually became an evangelist. On one of his evangelistic crusades, years later, a young man named J. Wilbur Chapman was in the audience. Chapman professed faith in Christ and, like Moody, became a preacher. Sometime later, at one of Chapman’s services, a professional baseball player named Billy Sunday heard Chapman preach, and Billy Sunday accepted Christ. The ball player became a full-time evangelist. He, too, led revival meetings. At one of those, a man named Mordecai Hamm heard Sunday preach, after which Hamm accepted Christ. Now you’ve probably guessed it: Hamm also became a preacher. While holding revival services in Charlotte, North Carolina, some young men bragged that they were going to Hamm’s crusade to heckle the preacher. A teenager named Billy Frank Graham overheard their plan, so he tagged along to see what would happen. While waiting to see, he heard Hamm preach, and Billy Graham converted to Christ.
Now, tell me, which one of those events was inconsequential? Take away one, and the rest veer in a different direction. And it all started with an ordinary Sunday School teacher taking time on a day like any other to visit an insignificant shoe sales clerk. But can we call any person or any event “insignificant”?
Let me caution against getting too involved in the game, “What If?” I think of Proverbs 20:24: “The Lord directs our steps, so why try to understand everything along the way?”
All we can do is live fully in each present moment, finding where God is working and joining Him.
Twenty years ago, I took my children back to Oklahoma to see my parents, Meme and Big Daddy, to David, Jr., and Mary. Having arrived, the question was, where would we eat? My dad wanted Chinese. I lobbied for fried catfish at Fred’s, a local hometown favorite. I won since I was visiting.
It “so happened” that Lori had returned home because her children, Madison and Harrison, had an eye appointment, after which Lori opted for fried catfish at Fred’s. And there, the two of us, once-upon-a-time high school sweethearts—met each other again.
The day we were married, I chuckled to my dad, whispering beneath my nervous breath, “We owe it all to Fred’s fried catfish.”
And who performed the wedding ceremony? Dr. John Hurtgen, my friend, who would later quip, “God is always active. Sometimes we see it; sometimes we don’t.”
And I’m forever thankful God doesn’t wait for me to see it, the sometimes anonymous and always mysterious God that He is.