dual personalities

“I think of a person I haven’t seen or thought of for years, and ten minutes later I see her crossing the street. I turn on the radio to hear a voice reading the biblical story of Jael, which is the story that I have spent the morning writing about. A car passes me on the road, and its license plate consists of my wife’s and my initials side by side. When you tell people stories like that, their usual reaction is to laugh. One wonders why.

I believe that people laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and of therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know. Who can say what it is that’s going on? But I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: “You’ve turned up in the right place at the right time. You’re doing fine. Don’t ever think that you’ve been forgotten.”

–Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking

A couple of weeks ago I was preparing to make a special report in a weekly meeting I attend at work. Doing this always makes me very nervous. I tell myself these people are not scary; they are my peers. It is no big deal. Still, I get nervous. I have trained myself not to ruin the day worrying about things that will take place in the future. Still, I worry.

Then, on the night before this meeting, I turned the page-a-day calendar I have to the next day. The Bible verse was: “For God did not give you a spirit of timidity, but one of power, and of love and of self-control.” My favorite Bible verse from First Timothy! And it couldn’t have been more appropriate. I wasn’t nervous anymore.

I do not believe in coincidence. I believe in the whispering voice saying, “You’re doing fine.”

Have you ever had such an experience? Pay attention and you will see that it happens with some frequency.

“This is a dynamic and mysterious universe and human life is, no doubt, conditioned by imponderables of which we are only dimly aware. People sometimes say, “the strangest coincidence happened.” Coincidences may seem strange, but they are never a result of caprice. They are orderly laws in the spiritual life of man. They affect and influence our lives profoundly. These so-called imponderables are so important that you should become spiritually sensitized to them. Indeed, the more spiritually minded you become the more acute your contact will be with these behind-the-scenes forces. By being alive to them through insight, instruction, and illumination, you can make your way past errors and mistakes on which, were you less spiritually sensitive, you might often stumble.”
― Norman Vincent Peale, Stay Alive All Your Life

* Albert Einstein and also Albert Schweitzer who said, “Coincidence is the pseudonym dear God chooses when he wants to remain incognito.”