God-incidences

How many times have you said, or heard someone else say, "it was such a coincidence the way it happened"?  Personally, I don't believe in coincidence.  That indicates that things happen by chance, accidentally, for no good reason.  I believe that everything happens as part of a plan, purposefully, and for every good reason (though it may not be discernible to us).  I believe that God guides all those things that seem to just happen, from life-changing events to the smallest details.  I call them "God-incidences".  I'll admit that I didn't come up with that myself, I heard it from a speaker several years ago.

I've experienced God-incidences numerous times in my life.  Actually, I've probably experienced them countless times without recognizing them.  I try to be consciously aware of such events, but my humanness gets in the way.  It's too easy to just flow through life without seeing how God has ordered things to follow His plan.

Have you ever been considering a new job?  Eleven years ago I was.  I liked the place worked and the type of work I did, but our small satellite office wasn't generating enough work to keep our 3 engineers and 2 planners busy on a consistent basis.  I updated my resume as I spent days with little to do other than surf the internet and play solitaire (doesn't sound bad, especially if you're getting paid, but it gets old quickly).  I thought and prayed about what to do for a few months.  I liked the small privately-owned firm that had given me a chance to expand my traffic engineering experience and I was truly friends with the others in my office.  And, as an engineer, change is not something I necessarily embrace, at least professionally.  Then came the day when the firm's partners visited with a bombshell: our office was closing.  We had 30 days to find a new job or move 250 miles away to the main office.  God answered my question of whether it was time to move on.

There's the little stuff too.  A song came on the radio the other day, and from the first few notes I thought to myself, oh it's that one that says "all you gotta do is turn around", I really like that song.  It wasn't, but guess what was the very next song to come on. 

I could go on, but I think you get the point.  So, the next time you're running late and therefore miss the truck whose brakes go out; or you feel compelled to stop for milk on the way home and run into a friend who needs a shoulder to cry on; or whatever other unexplainable event occurs in your life, remember that God knows our hearts and knows exactly what we need at every moment.  It's not about chance or luck or accident, it's about our Creator and Father directing things to complete His plan for each one of us.