Episode 330: I’m Talkin. . .Coincidence

I’m Talking, episode 330 for August 11th, 2024.

This is Joel from the I’m Talking microcast, where I share my thoughts on a topic that has piqued my interest this past week.

This week we’re talking coincidence.

As I often do on my microcast, when I’m talking about a word where I want to make sure we’re all on the same page, I start with a definition, and so I’m going to do that today as well.

And the definition in the dictionary reads, a remarkable concurrence of events with no apparent causal connection.

Maybe that doesn’t help very much because there’s words in the definition that maybe we have to define.

So simply put, it’s when two things happen at the same time with no apparent connection, and it causes us to say, well, that was a coincidence.

We all think we know what the word means and we all use it properly, so we actually do know what it means, but we use it in different ways.

And I was thinking about that today and thought, oftentimes when we think of the word coincidence, we don’t have another way to explain what happened.

We don’t have another way to look at it.

It’s just, there is apparently no connection between the two events that were watching occur or occurred to us or in the midst of a story.

It’s something that just happens.

And therein lies the challenge for those of us who call ourselves Christians.

So the first thought that I had as a Christian is, does the word coincidence exist or does the idea of a coincidence exist?

And I think that much like a UFO, which is an unidentified flying object, it doesn’t necessarily mean a spaceship.

And I think if we think of the word coincidence with no other explanation of the events, then maybe it does exist, but then we have to think more deeply and is there a cause?

Is there a connection?

How do we react when we initially think it’s a coincidence and we have to remember that God is sovereign and where does God fit in this equation?

The reality of the word coincidence is often a surprise and we serve a God who is never surprised.

So in that instance, maybe coincidence is never in existence, at least not for God.

But what we have to remember is that serving a sovereign God means that even when we don’t see a connection between events, he may, and we need to remember to give proper credit to God when there are things that are due him.

We need to remember to praise him because things worked out and we can see his hand in it.

And we need to remember that if a world thinks that we just think it’s a coincidence and that God does not have a hand in it, then how can we draw them to him?

And therein lies the challenge that we have to face as we move forward.

So coincidence, okay to use the word, not a problem.

It’s just that we have to remember that God is in control and we need to praise him for the hand that he has in working these things out in our lives.

Until next week, this is Joel from the I’m talking microcast.

I’ll talk to you soon.