At the Minneapolis Golf Club, something happened that may never be repeated. 13-year-old Preston Miller recorded a hole in one on hole #4, then kept playing with the same ball but lost it on hole 7. Later in the clubhouse, Ricardo Fernandez, a member there, arrived ecstatic. He too had a hole in one. “I had the same thing,” Preston told him. When Ricardo showed Preston his hole in one ball, it had the same distinct markings Preston’s had. “I found it on hole 7,” Ricardo told him. Turned out that two different golfers hit two holes in one with the same ball on the same day at the same course.
Coincidences. Have you encountered some?
Friends of ours have a daughter who married a wonderful young man. Not long after their wedding they were looking through one of her old photo albums. One image caused her to clap her hands over her mouth and let out a muffled scream. It was of kids around a campfire during Bible camp. A younger version of her was in the front row, and right behind her sat her future husband. Ah! Until that point, they didn’t know they had even been to the same camp.
Coincidences. Here are a few of my favourites:
The odds of getting hit by a meteorite are roughly one in a trillion, about the same as a Scotsman like me over-tipping in a restaurant. When a meteor crashed into a Paris home in 2011, police rushed over to check on the family. They were fine, of course, Their family name? Commette.
Here’s another. On June 28th 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot in his car in Sarajevo, which triggered a series of events leading to the First World War. The license plate on the Archduke’s car? A 11 11 18. The date of the final day of the war was the 11th day of the 11thmonth of 1918. Startling coincidences!
The famous Haileys’ Comet appears in the night sky for several months before returning to the sun for about 75 years before reappearing. Famous American author Mark Twain wrote in his autobiography, “I came in with Haileys’ comet in 1835. It’s coming again next year and I expect to go out with it.” And he did.
Coincidences. You may encounter some. But there’s one thing that is no coincidence: You. You are no random concurrence of sporadic disconnected events. You were once a sperm. And a speedy one! Nearly a hundred million of you assembled on that starting line for the race to the egg. The gun sounded and you—you won! You are no accident, my friend. You are a winner. Created with a purpose and given a divine appointment.
How do I know this? The Bible tells me so.
Listen to King David in Psalm 139:16 (NIV),
“Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
Your life was ordained by God. Maybe you say, “I’m not living like it.”
But if you still have breath in your lungs, it isn’t too late to make a difference, to make peace, to learn and grow and become the compassionate, life-giving person God designed you to be. Your life has meaning. God’s fingerprints are all over you.
Next time you encounter a coincidence, you think about that. I hope 10-year-old Laura Buxton does. You see, Laura released a red balloon that traveled 140 miles only to be discovered by another Laura Buxton the same age. Forgive me, but like that balloon, they were blown away. The two are friends now who say, “We don’t know why this happened but out of it has come a wonderful friendship.”
