Posted: Jul 18, 2017 1:18 am
I expect if someone representing a religion that was other than your own were to report their own coincidences--and everyone has them, all over the world, from all cultures and faith positions--you would find you are pretty good at ferreting out the various prosaic explanations that would render them just little less extraordinary.
I personally know three men who each scored a hole in one in successive weeks on the same par three hole in Texas. No one is really tempted to attribute this to the action of an intervening deity.
Here is a story that is a bit closer to your own...
As a young Christian, I prayed for the healing of a friend who was diagnosed with leukemia. He moved back home to another state to stay with family at about that same time. Another friend who was not a believer told me he had a dream about a girl with a tattoo that showed a bible verse. He told me the chapter and verse number, I looked it up, and was amazed to find it was a reference to healing. Then I got a call from yet another friend who reported that the guy with cancer had been suddenly healed.
I told that story for years.
But...coincidences aside, I realize that I was actively connecting dots and noticing details, while failing to connect other dots and ignoring other details.
And the guy was not miraculously cured; he suffered quite exquisitely, only achieved remission after a lengthy and painful stint of radiation and chemotherapy, and fatally relapsed after a few years.
I personally know three men who each scored a hole in one in successive weeks on the same par three hole in Texas. No one is really tempted to attribute this to the action of an intervening deity.
Here is a story that is a bit closer to your own...
As a young Christian, I prayed for the healing of a friend who was diagnosed with leukemia. He moved back home to another state to stay with family at about that same time. Another friend who was not a believer told me he had a dream about a girl with a tattoo that showed a bible verse. He told me the chapter and verse number, I looked it up, and was amazed to find it was a reference to healing. Then I got a call from yet another friend who reported that the guy with cancer had been suddenly healed.
I told that story for years.
But...coincidences aside, I realize that I was actively connecting dots and noticing details, while failing to connect other dots and ignoring other details.
And the guy was not miraculously cured; he suffered quite exquisitely, only achieved remission after a lengthy and painful stint of radiation and chemotherapy, and fatally relapsed after a few years.