mere coincidence?

My brother heads up a school in Africa.

He's been looking to the Lord for teachers, and a lovely Christian couple from another African country heard God's call.

Apart from the minor hassle of a major change in life, there was all the usual hassle in acquiring all the paper work. Bribery (in the form of chickens or goats) sometimes seems to speed the process up, but this couple refused to rely on that and said -

"We'd rather have God than a goat!"

A statement of faith. And God comes up trumps, the paper-work finally comes through.

What happens, though? They've hardly set off to drive all those miles to their new sphere of call, than the car's written off in an accident. They're hit by ... a goat.

Strange! Is that just coincidence .. or what?

Here's another strange thing, along those lines.

A couple have come to faith. Their lives have been enriched and changed quite markedly by their starting to follow Jesus.

This Sunday past that step of faith was marked in the rite of baptism. It was brilliant. Brought a tear to the eye. The hand of God so clearly on their lives.

What happens, though?

After the celebrations of that Sunday's flow of grace, the very next day there's a break in a pipe in their home upstairs and the whole place is flooded out: 20 long minutes of water from the mains flowing down through the light fittings in the kitchen ceiling before the flow can be stopped.

"So, we all got a bit of a baptism you could say!" was how they told me the story tonight.

Strange again!

Like someone somewhere was saying to that couple out in Africa -

"You'd rather have God than a goat? Well here's what a goat can do to you!"

Or the same sort of thing with the couple who've come to faith -

"You really want this baptism thing? Well try this baptism of the whole house for size!"

But in a sense, that's exactly it. There's a guy the Bible speaks about who comes to faith and he and his whole household are baptised.

And here's a couple today who've come to faith - and now in every sense their whole household's been baptised.

The blessing of God poured out upon them all!

We live in a sort of sacramental world, I guess. And there's maybe more than meets the eye to what we sometimes call 'coincidence'. It makes life quite exciting!