Serendipity or divine appointments?
If we live our lives as spiritual beings having a temporary human experience, we become available for all manner of divine assignments. We step out of the world of random living and begin asking, “God, what are you doing here? How can I run you errands and advance your Kingdom today?”
The more I try to live that way, the more God seems to interrupt my normal life with connections that defy the test of randomness. On the plane to California a few months ago, I ran into my friend Isa Couvertier. She had just ministered in Atlanta, seeing hundreds give their lives to Christ. We caught up and prayed together.
On the plane to Denver last month, my son was seated four rows in front of me. Upon landing he yelled back to me, “Dad, this guy next to me was with you fifteen years ago when you started the Gateway.” After leaving the plane, I talked to the man (Jamey Durham), learning that we had indeed been together in Mexico and that he is now a professor of film studies in Iowa.
Yesterday, hiking the Smoky Mountains with my family, I saw a familiar face approaching me on the trail. “Wade!” I exclaimed. “Seth!” He responded. Wade and Rachel had just left AIM Staff in Philadelphia this past year so he could finish up his degree at Bryan College. I walked with them to the bottom of the trail where we caught up and prayed together. It was great to connect with them.
You calculate the odds of these interactions. Out of 300 million people in America, I seem to bump into someone I know almost every time I’m out and about. What are the odds?
A person married to a rational, naturalistic world view, would be flummoxed by the extreme lack of randomness in the frequency of seemingly serendipitous encounters. For me it takes far more faith to believe in such a world. I wake up expecting divine appointments.
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HI Seth- I am always able to claim something from your blogs. Today, the gift is the link to Isa Couvertier. Thank you for this… and for all you do.
For a few months I sunk into a hole of focusing on what I needed to do, instead of what God wanted. Just recently I started praying that He would have me where He wanted me and keep me from where He would not, that I would be doing His will each day instead of what I thought needed done (I used to pray along these lines daily and big things were happening). Wow. I had forgotten how He worked. Wow. Everywhere all the time. It is amazing. It is how He used to get a hold of me and remind me that He is present, now I have to remind myself to pray that I am in His will and carefully listen for what He has to say that day. It is too easy to get busy and forget to ask.
One of my professors in Bible School, Larry Tomczak, wrote a book called “Divine Appointments” where he gave many examples of these very same things happening in his life. Through these “divine appointments” we see that our lives are far from random, especially when we are walking with God.