Coincidence or God’s Purpose?

Coincidence on the church stairway…

It was the middle of the church service…

I was volunteering, and had to get from the middle of the main floor to the mezzanine…

To avoid distraction, I went out into the lobby and took a little used staircase to the next level…

Coming down the staircase, I met a mom and her son.

It was so unusual to meet people on that staircase…

I said hello and asked… “Is there any way I can help you?”

They were new to the church, said the mom…And couldn’t find where the junior high kids were meeting.

As I took her there, I thought…. “I never use that staircase.  Neither does anybody else….  Yet we met each other there.”

What a coincidence!

Coincidence in the Emergency Room…

His wife wasn’t feeling well.  Not at all.

They went to the hospital emergency room…

Her condition could be remedied fairly easily, hospital personnel told them…

He wanted to thank them, but he couldn’t find the words. Literally. He could not speak.

Suddenly he was the patient.

He heard the word “Stroke”….

They fastened what looked like an extra-large hockey goalie’s mask on his head…

“Lay still…” said a disembodied voice.

The machine buzzed and beeped as it took brain images…

“There is a tumor,” they said.

Days later, with the tumor removed, he couldn’t help but think… if he had to have a stroke… the hospital was a good place to be when  it happened.

What a coincidence!

Coincidence in the Bible…

Do we live a life of coincidence or purpose?

Read the following from gotquestions.org …About the word “coincidence” in the Bible…

The word coincidence is used only once in the New Testament, and it was by Jesus Himself in the parable of the Good Samaritan. In Luke 10:31, Jesus said, “And by a coincidence a certain priest was going down in that way, and having seen him, he passed over on the opposite side.”

The word coincidence is translated from the Greek word synkyrian, which is a combination of two words: sun and kurios.

Sun means “together with,” and kurious means “supreme in authority.”

So a biblical definition of coincidence would be “what occurs together by God’s providential arrangement of circumstances.”

Are our days willed with random circumstance?

Are they filled with mere coincidence?

Or does God arrange the unrelated and seemingly insignificant details of our lives to accomplish His purpose?

The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands Psalm 138:8