COINCIDENCE OR PROVIDENCE?
Based on Esther 6:1-11
By Pastor Glenn Pease
Everyone experiences coincidence somewhere in life. Two people say the same thing at the same time. You go to call someone and the phone rings, and it is the person you were going to call. You flip open the hymnal, and it opens right to the number you were looking for. On and on we could go until we listed one you have experienced, for coincidence is common to all.
But sometimes coincidence rises to a level that is more amazing. Such is the case with the death of my father. The coincidence is in relation to Lavonne’s father. It is not very likely there are many mates in the world who had fathers with the same name of Charles, who lived in the same town, worked in the same meat packing plant, lived in the same house where they both died, only a few feet apart, although ten years apart, both in the night in similar ways, and both were buried in the same cemetery, on the opposite side of town from where they died.
Lest you puzzle over why they both died in the same place, let me explain. My parents bought Lavonne’s parents trailer home after her father died. You have to admit this is an unusual series of coincidences. It is rather amazing to me just because it is so highly unlikely, but as far as I know, it has no significance whatever. I share it for that very reason, to illustrate that coincidence, however amazing, and contrary to the odds, may be no more than just a matter of chance. Nothing would be affected in anyone’s life, that we are aware of, if our fathers had not lived and died with these coincidences. I see no value or loss in what happened. It just happened to work out that way.
Coincidence, therefore, does not necessarily have meaning. But what if coincidence does have meaning? Then we rise to the level where coincidence becomes providence. Providence is coincidence with a purpose-God’s purpose. It is no longer a mere matter of chance, but is the fulfilling of God’s plan in history. This too can be illustrated by what took place when my father died. I had no intention of going to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I had already written my parents and told them we would not be coming. Dad was failing fast, however, and we did not know if he could hold out much longer. Lavonne told this Jan Toy, and Jan shared with Steve, and Steve talked to the deacons. He then called me and urged me to take a few days off to go see my father.
I called home that night and mom said it would be appreciated if I would come home for a few days. We went, and found dad in terrible shape. He had aged 20 years in the months since I had last seen him. We talked off and on through the day, and he listened to one of my sermons on heaven that I had on tape. That night my older brother and I visited with him. He was more alert than he had been for sometime. In the morning mom called saying, “I think he is gone.” I leaped out of bed and ran into dad’s room, and saw at a glance that he was dead. I told mom to call his doctor. While she was gone I pushed his eyelids closed.
I was surprised he had gone so fast, yet I was calm, for I had prayed before going to sleep, “Lord if he cannot get well, take him home.” I was only repeating the prayer he had prayed himself a few hours earlier. Lavonne and I were there to take mom to the funeral home, and make all the arrangements, and then to the cemetery to finish arrangements. Then we went back home to spend the day contacting relatives all over the country. Had we not been there when we were, we would have missed the chance to be with dad on his last day, and mom would have been alone. Neither my brother nor my sister could have helped her that day. It was perfect timing that we had made it.
What a coincidence that the church would give me time off just when it was most needed. Nobody could know it was the best time, but God did, and so we see a coincidence with a purpose, and we consider this the providence of God. God was working in minds, events, and timing to accomplish a blessing in the lives of His people. The blessings were so marvelous that none of us really started the grief process until sometime later. The point of this long introduction is to make clear that there is a distinction between coincidence and providence.
Coincidence is a matter of chance, and it makes no real difference in life, one way or the other. It may be amazing, but if it never happened, no one would be hurt. If I had never gotten called by someone I was going to call, or had never flipped open the hymnal to the exact page, it would not have made any difference. Providence, on the other hand has clear purpose and meaning. You can see the hand of God in it, and you cannot help but thank and praise Him for His guidance. Esther is a book that has one coincidence after another. Because each of them is so vital to the survival of the Jews, and to their victory over their enemies, it is a book that specializes in the providence of God.
No where in the Bible will you find the providence of God more conspicuous then in this book, where God is never mentioned. Vashti, the Queen of Persia, rebels against her husband and loses her throne, so that the Jews can have a Jewish Queen on the throne, just when she was needed for their deliverance. What a coincidence! The keeper of the harem favored Esther, and he helped her, out of a host of beautiful girls, to so please the king, that she was selected as the Queen. What a break!
Mordecai overheard two men plot to assassinate the king, and by reporting it he saved the kings life. Now we come to chapter 6, and the whole story revolves around an amazing coincidence. The king could not sleep one night, and it happened to be the same night in which Haman, the Jew hater, was plotting to destroy Mordecai. What a marvelous coincidence that the king would call for the book of memorable deeds to be read to him that night, and that the forgotten deed of Mordecai would be read to him just minutes before Haman came to request that Mordecai be hung. If this coincidence had not take place, the whole story would have been tragedy rather than comedy, and the Jews would have been destroyed. Mordecai will be hung, or be a hero, and it all depended upon the coincidence of the kings being read this particular page in the record book he turned to.
The destiny of God’s people swings on the hinge of coincidence, but coincidence with such purpose and importance that we see clearly the providence of God. It is the hand of God in history directing the timing of events so as to determine the course of history. There is no miracle here at all. Everything is perfectly normal and natural. The king can not sleep, and so he calls for records to be read. He may have done this three times a week for 20 years. There is nothing marvelous about it. But this night the coincidence of reading about Mordecai’s noble deed of saving his life, just before Haman came to request his death, changed the course of history. The coincidences of the book of Esther are not amazing or startling in themselves. They are rather trivial even, but the purpose they fulfill shows them to be the providence of God.
We need to be alerted to the providence of God in our lives by evaluating coincidence. Because we take coincidence for granted, we likely miss much of the evidence of God’s leading in our lives. In other words, we do not sense that everyday the trivial events, contacts, and turn of events could be the providence of God. Katherine Marshall tells of her experience after the death of Peter Marshall. She was going to write the story of her famous husband’s life. But did not know how to get information on Peter’s step-father. She had exhausted all possible sources of information, she thought. Then one night, an English couple she had met invited her to dinner. In the course of the evening she felt and urge to tell them about her need. She could have suppressed that urge, considering it to be inappropriate, but she went ahead and shared.
The man interrupted her as she told of her need, and said, “Certainly you couldn’t be speaking of Peter Findlay?” “Yes,” she said, “Why?” The atmosphere was electrified. The man responded, “I worked beside him for years in the same office at Stewarts and Lloyds in Glasgow. I knew him well. What do you want to know?” Katherine Marshall had just experienced coincidence with a purpose, and thus, in the providence of God, she received what she needed. There were 800 thousand people in the District of Colombia, and only one of them knew anything about Peter Findlay, and he was the one who invited her to dinner. That experience of providence gave Katherine the courage she needed to go on to become one of the greatest Christian authors of the 20th century. By this event of providence, she heard God saying to her, “I’m in this with you.”
God may be seeking to guide us, and answer our prayers, by means of purposeful coincidence. We need to be aware of this, and learn to be more sensitive to this kind of leading in our lives. It may be happening more than we realize, and we miss it, or because we do not recognize it as the way God works, we fail to experience what God has for us in His providence. I am not saying that God will remove all of our problems if we are more sensitive to His providence. I do not see any such promise in the Bible. But God will work in all things for good with those who love Him, and are called according to His purpose. This simply means we need to be on the lookout for the purpose in coincidence, for this is one of the common ways in which God brings good out of all sorts of situations.
If a coincidence has no particular value, or purpose, then it is coincidence, and that it that. It is a matter of chance events. By chance events I mean, those things that happen that are not directed by God’s purpose, but are the result of the laws of nature He has created. Because He created these laws, He is, in a sense, the author of all that happens. But when he just allows the laws to function, and does not enter into them to interfere for a specific purpose, you do not call that providence.
For example, I worked for 4 years at a printing company. My job included the laying out of paper for the paper cutter. I would lay out tons of paper on any one day, and over the years filled out thousands of orders. Every once in while I would go the shelves of stock with an order. The order would call for 325 sheets of blue 20 lb. paper 18 by 34. I would start counting the sheets in an open package, and to my surprise, I would end up with exactly 325 sheets-just what I needed. It was always a surprise, because it was a rare coincidence, but it did happen, and I was impressed with how often the unlikely could happen by chance. What I was experiencing was coincidence. It had no meaning or purpose. It would happen to anyone who spent hours everyday counting out paper. It was a mere matter of chance. The only way it could be of value would be if it happened every time, and made you the best paper counter in the world, because you would not need to count at all, knowing the package had just what you needed. If a coincidence does not serve any meaningful purpose, it cannot be considered providential.
Paul Aurandt in The Rest Of The Story tells of a marvelous coincidence in the filming of the Wizard of Oz. Frank Morgan played the wizard, and Professor Marvel, the traveling sideshow man that Dorothy met. MGM’S wardrobe department was notified that they needed a coat for Professor Marvel. It had to reflect a sort of shabby gentility, a grandeur gone to seed. The staff went to second hand shops in Los Angeles, and they came back with 50 coats. The director and Frank met to select one. The one they decided on was a Prince Albert coat, with a velvet collar. It was worn, but spoke of former elegance.
One day, as the Professor Marvel scenes were being shot, Frank Morgan pulled out the pocket of his coat, and he noticed the name of the original owner. It was such a surprise, the MGM executives wired the tailor in Chicago to confirm what they had discovered. It was confirmed-the coat they had selected was originally made for the man who wrote the book-The Wizard Of Oz. It is an amazing story, it is so highly unlikely that you feel almost compelled to see forces beyond man involved. But because it has no significance or meaning, that is recorded, it is not likely it was providential. It made no difference, for had it not been his coat it would have served the same purpose. No purpose was achieved by this amazing coincidence, and without purpose it is not providential.
Why is it important to make the distinction between coincidence and providence? Because, if you don’t, you end up with a superficial theology that loses all sense of balance, and makes God responsible for much that is evil and folly. Just as an example: If God is responsible for all coincidence, then God is the key supporter of the gambling establishments of the world, and thus, the great benefactor of the Mafia, and other underworld organizations. Every time a slot machine comes up with three of a kind, that is a coincidence. Every time the roulette wheel stops where you have your money placed, that is a coincidence. If God intervened in this system of chance, the entire world of gambling could be eliminated in one day, for enough of these coincidence would destroy gambling. Christians could own Las Vegas in a week if God worked providentially in gambling. God does not do so, however, for it is not His plan to prevent men having a free choice to be foolish. Man is free to choose to gamble, and God will not interfere with that choice.
The point is, gambling is a world of coincidence, and not a world of providence. This is not to say, God never works providentially in this realm, but in general it is a world system guided by the laws of chance, and is not a God guided system. If it was, and all coincidence was of God, then the Christian would have an obligation to both gamble and promote it, as a way of achieving God’s purpose in history. Coincidence can be good, evil, or indifferent. Providence is always good, for it is for the fulfilling of God’s purpose. Coincidence can be very negative. Two cars meet at the same time at the intersection, and life is taken. Millions of coincidences happen in which wrong timing leads to evil and death.
In Esther we see Haman being the victim of God’s judgment through His good providence to Mordecai. In other words, for Mordecai to be spared, and all the Jews to be saved, the enemies of the Jews had to be destroyed. So there can be a negative side to providence as well. Haman was hung because of the providential guidance of God in protecting Mordecai. If you can show that tragedy to someone is the key to the survival of someone else in God’s will, you can see providence is good, even in negative results. Most accidents, however, do not fall into this category, but are in the category of coincidence which is determined by chance, and not by God.
God still works in all things for good, and can bring values out of life’s negatives, but the negative is not necessarily a part of His plan. If I chose to be a fool, and gamble away a thousand dollars, my loss and depression may lead me to change my life in a very positive way. This does not mean that God’s plan was for me to be a fool and gamble. It just means that His providence never ceases to seek ways of bringing good out of evil. The evil, however, is not part of His plan.
The entire issue of prayer is based on the distinction between coincidence and providence. If all that happens in life is God’s plan, then, of course, prayer is meaningless, and we just as well sing, whatever will be will be, and forget it. If, however, we live in a world where there is a combination of natural law, and wills that determine what happens, then prayer makes sense. What we are doing in prayer is asking that God exercise His will, and guide events to accomplish His purpose. Prayer is saying to God, “I know you can make a difference in the events of life, and I want to cooperate in seeing those differences made that fulfill your will for me.” Why pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” if it will be done regardless? The point is, it won’t be done unless we cooperate with God’s providential guidance.
With this attitude in mind, you can face every day as an adventure in which all that you do, and all that you say, can make a difference in your own destiny, and the destiny of others. Even trivial decisions can take you down a path to values you might have otherwise have missed. God’s method of guiding is not usually by miracle, but by providence, as we see all through the book of Esther. The Jewish race was saved in Esther by the providential timing of trivial events. It is the most common way that God has for protecting His people from tragedy yet today.
Let me close with an illustration of how God once providentially answered the oft repeated prayer, “God save the Queen.” Queen Victoria was on the express train racing through the night to London. Suddenly the engineer saw a strange sight in the engine’s headlight. A weird figure in a black cloak waving its arms caused the engineer to grab for the brakes, and bring the train to a grinding halt. He and his partner jumped out to see what it was. They walked down the track, and stared in horror, for they saw a bridge washed out, and toppled into the swollen stream. All would have been killed had they not stopped. But they could not find the one who warned them. The engineer climbed back into his cab and switched on the lamp. At the base was a huge dead moth. He held it up to the lamp, and it cast a shadow which explained what they saw. The Queen was told, and she said, “I’m sure it was no accident. It was God’s way of protecting us.” It was clearly an amazing coincidence, that was also the providence of God.
just because you pray about a thing