Late one night, Slim Cornett was being shown around a county airport in rural Mississippi by a member of his church who managed the facility. “This switch lights up the runway,” the man said as he flipped it. “Then, let’s say there is a plane in distress up there. I would throw this switch and turn on the search lights.”
As the night skies lit up, a small plane materialized out of the darkness and landed. Slim and his friend watched in amazement as Franklin Graham, son of the famous evangelist, stepped off the plane. The pilot had been flying Franklin back to school in Texas when the electrical system shut down, leaving them stranded in the Mississippi night without lights or radio or any means of guidance. From out of nowhere, the search beam had come on and guided them to the landing strip.
As Franklin’s mother, Ruth, tells the story, earlier that evening before they left home, Billy Graham had prayed for the Father to protect and guide his son and the pilot.
It sure was lucky those men happened to be in the airport after hours, wasn’t it? And how coincidental that they turned on the searchlight when they did. Yeah, right.
Someone has said a coincidence is God wishing to remain anonymous. If so, it isn’t working, because, far from concealing Him, this kind of concurrence is a dead giveaway that God is on the premises.
Squire Bushnell, a veteran television executive, has written a book called “When God Winks,” in which he claims these intersections of people and events are nudges from the Creator reminding us we are not alone in life’s adventures. It’s a fun book on an intriguing theme (although Christians may disagree with some of Bushnell’s conclusions). Two lovers discover their grandfathers were best friends half a century earlier. Does this guarantee the match is made in Heaven? Not to me, it doesn’t. Still, I love the concept of God signaling to us His nearness by these tiny miracles.
My wife Margaret and I used to talk of having two children, “a boy for me and a girl for you.” We had two boys, Joe Neil Jr., and John Marshall, but no daughter. When the boys were 8 and 11, we adopted a five-year-old Korean daughter whose name was Jin Ok. On the day we met her at the airport, someone told us Jin Ok means “real pearl.” We began laughing. Margaret comes from the Greek “margaritas” meaning “pearl.” We had our daughter named for her mother. God was winking, and enjoying the moment as much as we.
My friend Bryan saw God wink. Aboard a plane to Salt Lake City, Bryan got acquainted with his seatmates, a mother and her ten-year-old daughter. The lady found it intriguing that Bryan was a minister and peppered him with questions. Eventually, Bryan shared his story with her—of how Jesus Christ had changed everything about his life—and ended up praying with them both as they invited Jesus to become their Savior.
That’s when the lady told Bryan why they were headed for Utah.
She had been separated from her husband for two years due to his drinking problem, but he had conquered the bottle and they were going to try marriage again. “He needs the Lord, too,” she said. “When we get to Salt Lake City, would you mind talking to him about this?”
Bryan was more than willing. In the airport, they met the husband and found out that minutes earlier, as he was waiting for the plane, a furloughing missionary had sat down beside him and led him to faith in Jesus Christ. God had arranged the schedules of two ministers on opposite sides of the world to get this family in the kingdom.
The story of Jesus’ birth is lined with Heavenly coincidences. A Roman census moves Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem just in time to fulfull a 500-year-old prophecy that the Messiah would be born there. Shepherds found the stall where the Lord was born, and breathlessly announced that they had seen a skyful of angels proclaiming His birth. Foreigners chasing a star showed up bearing gifts, gold among them, just in time to finance the family’s hasty flight to Egypt.
God was moving Heaven and earth to get you and me into the Kingdom.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ came together at a moment in time when the Greek language and Roman highways and disillusionment over the old religions flowed together to create an ideal situation for spreading this message.
Coincidence? No, just a sovereign God on the job.
Joe McKeever is a cartoonist and pastor of First Baptist Church of Kenner, Louisiana.
Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
