As a believer, the word "coincidence" is not part of my normal vocabulary.
There are times when I notice a common theme running through posts among friends who are believers as well as ministers I follow online.
This happened again just the other day.
One of the thoughts I awoke with centered around the concept of "vision".
Vision in the sense of how we foresee and plan for our spiritual future and that of others.
As I read through various posts, I realized that this concept was running through the hearts and minds of many friends and ministers.
This brought to my mind the words of Helen Keller who said, "It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision."
Those words have always stuck with me, so I posted them online citing her as the source of the quotation.
A short time later, a friend jokingly asked if I had been reading her mind.
Obviously, what she meant was the concept of vision occupied her thoughts as well.
I replied that while I cannot read people’s minds, I do believe that sometimes God strikes a chord that resonates among believers.
This friend agreed and told me her pastor once delivered a message about "sympathetic resonance".
That has been on my mind a great deal since.
I remember studying sympathetic resonance in physics a long time ago.
It occurs when the vibrations of one object cause another object to vibrate with a harmonic frequency.
You may have noticed this when a passing car’s radio causes your window panes to vibrate.
This can occur spiritually speaking, as it often does, when one believer shares with another who shares with another, and so on.
Many times, however, I honestly believe that God is actively at work placing within us that which we need at the time, collectively speaking.
Perhaps another term for God striking such a resonating a chord among a number of believers simultaneously could be "empathetic resonance."
Allow me to illustrate with an example.
Several Sunday’s ago it was a friends turn to deliver our senior assembly at church.
My friend was running late, so I volunteered to fill in for him.
From the time I awoke thoughts of God’s complete forgiveness and mercy occupied my mind.
As such, I knew what devotional I would share and the scripture I would offer to accompany it.
Just as I was about to lead that assembly, my friend arrived and I turned the proceedings over to him.
I felt that God was at work when the scripture he offered was the exact same scripture I was about to deliver.
That feeling was confirmed when that very same passage of scripture was read during the worship service and the pastor’s message was built upon it.
What was that one passage of scripture?
Psalm 103:12 (NET) - As far as the eastern horizon is from the west, so he removes the guilt of our rebellious actions from us.
Coincidence?
Hardly.
As an analyst, I work with numbers daily.
According to my calculation, if this had been merely a random occurrence, the chances of three individuals choosing the same passage of scripture in this setting were approximately 1 in 30,000,000,000,000.
It makes far more sense to me that God, who knows His children intimately and knows what their greatest need is at the time simply strikes a unifying and resonant chord among them.
Remember, nothing is impossible for God!
Blessings,
Jim Pokorny
The Other Brother Jim
http://otherbrotherjim.blogspot.com
There are times when I notice a common theme running through posts among friends who are believers as well as ministers I follow online.
This happened again just the other day.
One of the thoughts I awoke with centered around the concept of "vision".
Vision in the sense of how we foresee and plan for our spiritual future and that of others.
As I read through various posts, I realized that this concept was running through the hearts and minds of many friends and ministers.
This brought to my mind the words of Helen Keller who said, "It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision."
Those words have always stuck with me, so I posted them online citing her as the source of the quotation.
A short time later, a friend jokingly asked if I had been reading her mind.
Obviously, what she meant was the concept of vision occupied her thoughts as well.
I replied that while I cannot read people’s minds, I do believe that sometimes God strikes a chord that resonates among believers.
This friend agreed and told me her pastor once delivered a message about "sympathetic resonance".
That has been on my mind a great deal since.
I remember studying sympathetic resonance in physics a long time ago.
It occurs when the vibrations of one object cause another object to vibrate with a harmonic frequency.
You may have noticed this when a passing car’s radio causes your window panes to vibrate.
This can occur spiritually speaking, as it often does, when one believer shares with another who shares with another, and so on.
Many times, however, I honestly believe that God is actively at work placing within us that which we need at the time, collectively speaking.
Perhaps another term for God striking such a resonating a chord among a number of believers simultaneously could be "empathetic resonance."
Allow me to illustrate with an example.
Several Sunday’s ago it was a friends turn to deliver our senior assembly at church.
My friend was running late, so I volunteered to fill in for him.
From the time I awoke thoughts of God’s complete forgiveness and mercy occupied my mind.
As such, I knew what devotional I would share and the scripture I would offer to accompany it.
Just as I was about to lead that assembly, my friend arrived and I turned the proceedings over to him.
I felt that God was at work when the scripture he offered was the exact same scripture I was about to deliver.
That feeling was confirmed when that very same passage of scripture was read during the worship service and the pastor’s message was built upon it.
What was that one passage of scripture?
Psalm 103:12 (NET) - As far as the eastern horizon is from the west, so he removes the guilt of our rebellious actions from us.
Coincidence?
Hardly.
As an analyst, I work with numbers daily.
According to my calculation, if this had been merely a random occurrence, the chances of three individuals choosing the same passage of scripture in this setting were approximately 1 in 30,000,000,000,000.
It makes far more sense to me that God, who knows His children intimately and knows what their greatest need is at the time simply strikes a unifying and resonant chord among them.
Remember, nothing is impossible for God!
Blessings,
Jim Pokorny
The Other Brother Jim
http://otherbrotherjim.blogspot.com
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