By Judith Victoria Hensley

Plain Thoughts

Synchronicity is the unlikely event of two or more things coming together at precisely the right time. Consider running in to an old friend you haven’t seen in twenty-five years. What plans did you make in advance to be where you were on that particular day from unrelated places. What parking space put you the right amount of steps from that person at exactly the right time so that your paths would cross without any prior planning on either end?

As a person of faith, I believe that God orders our steps. When others believe that random chance ordered events in their lives to turn out a certain way, I believe that we have a spark of God within each of us. He calls to that part of Himself in us and we have the freedom to respond or ignore the call. BUT, if we acknowledge God’s active participation and intervention in our lives, then we reject the idea of any major event in our lives being random.

The events of our lives are not always pleasant of wanted. Even then, if we rest our faith in God, we can be assured that He is with us, His Spirit guiding us, and our faith in Jesus rewarded in a million ways over the course of our lifetime.

I could take many pages from my own life to support this idea that concept of synchronicity is actually the worlds spin on our steps being ordered by the Lord.

Have you ever started to leave the house and turned back to look for keys, check on a locked door, or make sure a burner has been turned off. A few minutes down the road you come up on a car wreck that barely happened. Your frustrating delay may have been exactly the thing that delayed you and prevented your own personal involvement in the accident.

This is not to say that we’re robots, or puppets on a string. Absolutely not. Humankind has been given the ability to think and the right to choose their own path, make their own decisions, and go their own way. Even when God calls to that part of Himself within each one of us, He gives us the freedom to walk away.

Personally, I try to be mindful of all the way things work out in amazing ways in my life. I have struggles, heartaches, and disappointments just like everyone else. But it doesn’t take long for me to consider the circumstances and be grateful for the way things turn out day after day.

This mental attitude certainly kicks negativity in the head. It’s just as easy, and far more rewarding to look for the good in every situation and to rest in the assurance that even the bad things that happen to us teach us important life lessons and have the ability to make us better, more compassionate human beings.

When a door opens in life that we are not expecting, we can be assured that there is an opportunity on the other side of that door which we never would have experienced otherwise. Timing makes all the difference.

This week I found in my manuscript files a book I started and had almost finished several years ago. I don’t know why I didn’t finish it at that time. The title is Appalachian Pride and Prejudice. The story is set in Harlan County with our coal mining economy and declining jobs in the industry playing a huge part in the characters’ lives. I finished the story and proofread it in less than a week with 264 pages of Harlan County from cover to cover. If I’m right about synchronicity, the timing of finding this story in my files and having it ready to be published in a matter of days is no accident.

I can’t wait to see how it turns out.