I have a friend who can list off coincidence after coincidence in his life. He tells me stories of stopping at a gas station in Nowhere New Mexico and meeting a grade school classmate that he grew up with in New Jersey.
Or the time he was hiking in New Zealand and ran into someone he had worked with on Mt. Rainier in Washington state.
Or of running into a woman he first met in Germany on an exchange program in his teens. Running into her twenty years later. In America. By chance.
It seems to happen to him. Former students, former co-workers, former teachers, distance relatives all seem to show up in faraway at unplanned times.
I think he has a memory for people, plus he is very outgoing.
So is it coincidence? Or is it good memory and a lack of fear?
Plus he would never credit God’s hand as playing a role in any of it.
For me, I just read the other morning something Augustine said about looking at chicken tracks in the mud of the hen yard, and how it looks like chaos, but if you look at those criss-crossed nonsensical paths through the eyes of faith, you can see Providence.
Is the fact that one hen gets a slew of tasty bugs scratching in the hen yard, while another hen seems to miss all the good ones in the same hen yard a matter of skill, or coincidence, or Providence, or sheer luck?
Life is such a mystery.
This is my response to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: coincidence.
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 