This past week when I was working the evening shift at the hospital, I was asked to take a family up to the chapel so that they could pray for their loved one. As we were leaving the unit, they asked if I would be able to perform last rites for the patient. I said I wasn’t a priest, but that I could call him and as we were heading to the elevators, there was Father Paul. He had just been visiting his sister.
The timing was perfect and the Unity teachings would call that Divine Order. Father Paul, said, “I call those ‘God incidents’, not coincidences.” Synchronicity is another way of describing the way things will seamlessly come together. See the blog I wrote on Synchronicity and Coincidence: https://wordpress.com/post/revairin.wordpress.com/418
Divine timing may be another way of thinking about a God incidence. There is a fair amount of information on the term God incident on the internet, including other bloggers that have written about it. For example, Christian philosopher Max Baker-Hytch, writes in his article, ‘When do coincidences become ‘God-incidences?’, about another term that has been coined for them.1 “Strikingly Juxtaposed Events, or SJEs for short, one that neither affirms nor denies that God is behind such things.”
I think timing of anything is key. A couple weeks ago we had a speaker, Fred Brancato, who wrote the book, “Mystery and Manifestation: Reflections on Life Experience Beyond Ideology, Theology, and Belief Systems.” One of the things he said was, “Nothing exists independent of anything else. Our very being is the being of the Divine. There is only one being and everything is a manifestation of that one being.”
You have probably heard it said by Alfred Lord Tennyson,“Closer is He then breathing and nearer than hands and feet.” Also you may have heard that God knows what we need before we ask. Therefore we technically don’t need any proof; yet for the nonbelievers, we do need it.
So, a story from my personal life, I had been given a small bike for a two- to four-year-old and I dropped it off at the home of a friend who had a two and a 10 year old. Then I came across a Richard Scary book and dropped it off for his older brother to read to him. This was a hit, too and I texted their mother, saying that I bet I would make a great grandfather! She responded with, 1000%! This was around August 8, 2022. It was a heart felt wish and I didn’t give it much more thought. I had worked with kids most of my life and had been told by a parent that for someone who never had any of their own, I really understood them.
Right around that time I had found a dollhouse left at our recycling center. I couldn’t pass it by and knew that I could fix it up for a little girl. I stored it in my garage. Meanwhile, before and during covid my wife had stayed in touch with a woman who had adopted a baby girl. She was 4 and a half now. She, her mother, and another little girl would come over now and then on Fridays at our house while I was working at the hospital. I thought of repairing and renovating the dollhouse for her for Christmas and began working on it. It was so much fun, and I was looking forward to how she would respond to having it. By the time the two of them came over it was the first weekend in February. She really loved it! While they were looking at it, her mother said that they hadn’t asked us yet, but we had been adopted by them as her parents and grandparents for her daughter.
In the moment it hadn’t sunk in yet, that I had been wanting this more than since August when I put it into words, not thinking it was possible. Of course, I said sure, in response. The next day it had fully sunk in and I was feeling and understanding joy like I had never known it before. I was totally blissed out.
I think that this was an example of Divine order and Fred Brancato’s “Nothing exists independently of anything else” and God being closer than our very breath, knowing before we ask.
When was your last God incident or SJE Divinely orchestrated?
Rev Airin
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