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Coincidence, Miracle, or the Providential Hand of God

Last week I told some of the story Joni Eareckson who while diving into the Chesapeake Bay became a paraplegic. She and her sister were swimming, playing on a raft. While her sister headed in for the beach to dry off and sun Joni dove into the sandbar. The headfirst collision fractured her spine leaving her unable to move at the bottom of the bay.

Joni also tells how the night before the accident on a whim she decided to color her hair beach blonde. Her natural color was, in her words, a mousy brown.

As her sister was leaving the water, with her back to the raft, unaware of the accident her sister had just suffered and unable to know that she would drown within a minute or two stepped onto the beach and her tow was pinched by a crab. She wheeled around to warn her sister that the crabs were out only to see her sister’s recently blonde hair shining from the bottom of the bay. She swam back out, dove down and saved her sister’s life.

Dark Questions Haunt Rumors of a God of Love

Eric Metaxas who interviews her on his radio show calls this a miracle in his book on Miracles. Some might call it a fortunate coincidence, others an unfortunate coincidence because Joni would be saved only to live bound to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. I think traditional theology would likely categorize it as the providential hand of God.

Also as we talked about last week this adds complexity to the story. If we imagine that God is involved either by acting in an extraordinary way that violates the normal operations of this world or by simply arranging the timing of a whim to color her hair and ordering a crab to pinch the toe of a young swimmer we certainly could wonder if he couldn’t have also simply helped Joni notice the sandbar and avoid the accident all together.

These questions haunt us not because we are so smart to realize them but because we live in a space where when we say “God” we imagine a being of infinite power and goodness who cares for each one of us and once such an idea comes into our imagination AND we see the horror of this young woman’s vibrant body destroyed by the simple blind physics of impact we doubt that such a God is in fact running the universe.

This doubt is not new. Read Homer as Odysseus through strength and craft tries to get what he wants out of a chaotic universe working to outmaneuver capricious and petty gods.

Shakespeare knows the story.

In King Lear, Gloucester famously says: “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods. / They kill us for their sport.” That is the pagan view of “the gods,” who certainly don’t exist, and who, if they did exist, obviously would not love us mortals. From what we know of them, they treat us indifferently and often downright cruelly, just as a “wanton boy” would pull the wings off a fly.

Metaxas, Eric (2014-10-28). Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life (p. 60). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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