Coincidence or Providence? Being in God's Place in God's Time

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Genesis 40:9-15
July 7, 2013

So the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, ‘In my dream there was a vine before me, and on the vine there were three branches. As soon as it budded, its blossoms came out and the clusters ripened into grapes. Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand; and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup, and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand.’ Then Joseph said to him, ‘This is its interpretation: the three branches are three days; within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office; and you shall place Pharaoh’s cup in his hand, just as you used to do when you were his cupbearer. But remember me when it is well with you; please do me the kindness to make mention of me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this place. For in fact I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews; and here also I have done nothing that they should have put me into the dungeon.’

            When you read the whole story of Joseph, about him being sold into slavery by his brothers, being put into prison, meeting people from Pharaoh’s court, getting the opportunity to interpret his dreams, being put in charge of Egypt’s food supply during a time of famine, and then being able to welcome his father and brothers into Egypt during a famine, it’s hard to escape the reality that Joseph was always in God’s place in God’s time. That’s not the same as saying that Joseph’s path was easy. In fact, being in God’s place in God’s time often isn’t easy, as Joseph’s life demonstrates. It can mean being in places we don’t want to be. But despite the suffering Joseph underwent, he was in God’s place in God’s time.

            Joseph’s story is a great example of a really prominent theme in Christianity, both in the Bible and throughout 2000 years of Christian experiences. It shows how God often chooses to work through what many would call coincidences, but we Christians call providences. Many Christian writers and teachers have spoken about this. Adrian van Kaam often said that, “there are no coincidences, only providences.” The archbishop of Canterbury (the head of the Anglican Church world-wide) in the 1920s often said, “I find that when I pray coincidences happen. When I cease to pray, coincidences stop happening.” Many others talk about coincidences, preferring to call them “God-incidences.” Experiencing God in seeming coincidences is to be a staple of biblical and Christian experience.

            I first became fascinated with the connection between faith and God’s coincidences through the events that led me to eventually go to seminary and become a pastor. So much of what changed me from a person who had walked away from church to a person passionately involved in church was clearly coincidental/providential. It felt as though I was being carried, through a set of coincidences, into a whole new way of living life. That doesn’t mean I always went peacefully.

            Still, for a long time I wasn’t sure whether these coincidences were just in my mind, or were something more objective—something others experienced. Then I had an experience during my 2nd year of being a pastor that made me realize that God often works in coincidental, providential, and God-incidental ways with everyone who is open.

            The year was 1990, and I was preaching on a particular Sunday. As an associate pastor I generally preached about once every five to six weeks, which made the timing of this coincidence even more interesting. In this particular sermon I was preaching about faith, and about how real faith gives us a sense of purpose and meaning in life. I then gave an example of what life without faith is like. I read the congregation a passage from a book that my wife, Diane, whom I was dating at the time, had given me. The book was titled, The Search for Meaning, by Phillip Berman. Berman had traveled the country, interviewing people from all walks of life about what gave them meaning. He interviewed well-known people, as well as those who were unknown. Each chapter of the book offers a different set of interviews corresponding to a particular meaning perspective.

            In my sermon I focused on an interview with one particular man, a man named Elisha Shapiro. Shapiro called himself a nihilist, which means that he didn’t believe in anything at al—not God, not meaning, not morality. Then I read a passage from the book in which Shapiro said, “But me, I call myself a nihilist.  It’s part of my art to call myself a nihilist.  There is no God, and I don’t feel like replacing him with anything, and I like it that way.  It’s a joyful experience, not an angst-filled one.  My basic belief, if you can call it that, is that there is nothing that’s constant, whether it’s a more or ethical tenet or whether it’s a physical law.  Take for example the statement ‘the grass is green.’  That’s not always true.  Nor is the sky always blue. Maybe that’s not true.  We don’t know.  Maybe it’s all a dream.  I like the idea that everything that people cling to that’s comforting or gives them a grounding is subject to change.  People change, and nothing is constant….

            “To me, there really isn’t any significance to life, none whatsoever.  No significance.  And I find that’s a comforting thing.  You’re let off the hook that way. (Laughs.) People feel like that’s a terrible emotional deal.  But there is no significance to my existing here.  I’m a product of… if I were to try to figure out what I was a product of, the best thing I could guess would be billions of years of coincidences, dumb luck.  I enjoy my existence as an animal organism—if I’m not just a figment of my own imagination.  If I am in existence at all, I’m just this animal organism running by what makes it run, what coincidentally came along with this package.”

            After reading that passage, I said to the congregation that I couldn’t understand how anyone could live this way, or how anyone could live without a real sense of faith or meaning. I mentioned that it was a life devoid of meaning, and therefore any kind of compassion or real sense of service to others. I think the sermon went well.

            At the end of the worship service a visitor to the church, a woman in her mid-30s, shook my hand at the door as she dabbed away tears. She asked if she could make an appointment with me. We agreed to meet the following Thursday. 

            Thursday came and she and I sat down to talk. She said to me, “I’ll bet you’re wondering why I had tears in my eyes on Sunday, and why I asked to meet with you.” I told her that the thought had crossed my mind, and that I hoped it wasn’t due to my giving a dreadfully bad sermon. She then went on to tell me her story. She had grown up in Southern California in a family that was part of the Four Square Gospel Church, a fundamentalist church that was highly restrictive and regimented. Growing up, she felt as though she was never allowed to do anything the other children were doing, and as though she was a prisoner of her parents’ religion. She couldn’t wait to get out from under her their control.

            After graduating from high school, she met a charismatic and dynamic man—a man who promised her freedom and a life filled with adventure and excitement. She left home to travel with this man, along with a group of others who seemed to be part of his entourage. They lived an exciting life of drugs, partying, and experimentation. But then the life took a downward spiral. The man became more and more controlling. He enticed her to dabble in all sorts of sexual practices with other men, and he turned her into something very close to a prostitute. She found herself trapped in a nightmare. What made it worse was that through this lifestyle she ended up damaging some of her internal reproductive organs, leaving her with a working ovary on the right side of her body and a working fallopian tube on the other side. In other words, without artificial help to get an egg across a wide cavity, she could never get pregnant.

            It took her two years to escape this man’s grasp. She moved back home and enrolled in college, majoring in psychology. After graduating she enrolled in a master of social work program so that she could become a counselor working with lost souls like herself. She eventually met a man, a psychologist, whom she married. They moved around a bit as he took on teaching jobs and worked in rehab centers. Their travels brought them to the town where I was an associate pastor. She told me that it had taken her so long to recover from the life with that man who had destroyed so much of her life, and that church was something that helped her tremendously. She came to our church looking for a place to help her continue to heal, especially when she was beginning to obsess about her past more in recent months. She had been praying to God to help her find a church that would help her heal.

            She then leaned forward and said to me, “You can imagine my surprise when I came here for church Sunday and you talked about Elisha Shapiro.  You see, Elisha Shapiro was that man I just told you about.” She then said that she was still living the consequences of that life. All her life she wanted to have and raise children, but because of her internal scarring there was no way to become pregnant naturally. Her only option was in-vitro fertilization, especially since her husband was against adopting children. At that time they had already spent thousands of dollars on unsuccessful in-vitro fertilization treatments.

            She eventually joined the church and became a very active (and personally inspiring for me) member, and one of our most prayerful members. She taught me a lot about how faith can lead to a life of God-incidences. She taught me that my experiences weren’t unique, but were quite common for Christians, especially as we grow deeper in our faith. But her coincidences weren’t through. Over the years she kept trying to have children via in-vitro, but after going through twelve or so treatments without success, at a cost of thousands of dollars, she decided that she couldn’t do it anymore. 

            She and I talked many times over the year about her disappointment, and we even prayed for healing, but nothing seemed to work. She was disappointed and helpless to do anything about it. For a long time we didn’t talk about it. Then, one day, she walked into my office with a big, ear-to-ear grin. I asked her what had happened, and she said, “I’m two months pregnant!”  I said to her, “But I thought you quit the in vitros.”  She said, “I did.  This was a natural pregnancy.” I then asked her what had happened.

            After jokingly asking me if she needed to give me a lecture on the birds and the bees, she told me that about two months prior, in the midst of despair and sadness, she sat down with God and prayed: “Lord, you know how much I want to be a mother.  You know how much I’ve wanted this my whole life.  It doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it.  So, Lord, I give you my life.  If you want me to become a mother, I will become the best mother I can be, and I will serve you as a mother.  If not, I will serve you the best I can in whatever you call me to do.  All I want to do is to be yours, so I will follow you and serve you however you want.”  She said that it must have been during that week that she got pregnant.  She was convinced that she became pregnant because she surrendered to God and gave up her demand that God make her pregnant. She gave up control over her life. It was her saying to God that she was God’s no matter what, and that she was willing to give up her dreams, that seemed to open her to God’s Spirit. Her miracle happened because of her surrender. Seven months later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Two years later, she gave birth to another healthy baby boy. Both of these conceptions were pretty near physically impossible.

            She taught me that when we have faith and pray, coincidences, providences, and God-incidences become a regular part of our lives. One of the reasons we’re doing this series on “Coincidence or Providence?” is to explore what we can learn from these God-incidences. From her I learned three really big lessons:

            First, if we choose to turn away from God and God’s way, God won’t stop us. God really does give us freedom of choice, and the real basic freedom is whether we will choose God’s way for us or our own way. If we choose our own way, no matter how destructive it might be, God won’t stop us. But God will wait and watch for us, much like the prodigal son’s father (Luke 15:11-32). The son takes his inheritance and squanders it on an self-destructive life. But the father watches every day for his son to return, and when he does the father runs to embrace and restore him. This is the way God is with us. God will let us choose a path of destruction, if that is our choice, but God also always waits to restore us, often using coincidences to do so.

            Second, when we choose to return, God takes whatever life we give God, and makes it better. But that doesn’t mean God will make it perfect. God won’t necessarily take away the scars, consequences, or burdens of our bad choices and lifestyles. But God will find a way to make our lives better, starting with where we are. And that life will be better than anything we could imagine when we were struggling and lost.

            Third, the more we open to God, the more God will surprise us. This is the great lesson of God-incidences. God loves to surprise us with possibilities we didn’t know were possible. I never imagined that becoming a pastor could be a great thing. My friend didn’t realize that God could actually speak to her directly through a stranger’s sermon, nor that she could get pregnant naturally despite her prognosis.

            God is also ready to surprise you,… if you are open and ready.

            Amen.