The lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from the Lord. (Proverbs 16:33)
Saturday, I was hitting balls on the range at Champions Golf Club. It wasn’t too hot. It wasn’t too humid, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky—a rare combination for Houston. To add to this conspiracy of wonderfulness, I was hitting the ball pretty well.
This got me thinking about a time two years ago when I was practicing at the other end of the range at Champions. On that day, I was hitting even better, and I did something I had never done before and probably will never do again: I hit the flagstick on two consecutive shots from 125 yards with a pitching wedge.
When I thought back on that day, I had an idea for writing a Links Players devotional. So I set my wedge against my bag, pulled out my iPhone, and made a note so I wouldn’t forget.
I grabbed my wedge, scraped over a practice ball, and hit another solid shot toward the flag 133 yards away. As I turned into a balanced finish with the club rotating over my left shoulder, I watched as the ball landed 6 feet in front of the flag and bounced dead center into the flagstick.
G.K. Chesterton said coincidences are spiritual puns. Like words cleverly placed in a sentence to carry two different meanings, in His sovereignty, God sometimes orchestrates events in our lives such that the supernatural sounds in circumstances.
Peter had a vision on the roof at Simon the Tanner’s house in Joppa, and when the vision ended, Cornelius’s men immediately arrived at the house (Acts 10:1-23). Paul and Silas were imprisoned in Philippi, and while they were praying and singing hymns, an earthquake occurred, opening the prison doors and unfastening their shackles (Acts 16:25-26).
Perhaps atheists would look at the two examples in the previous paragraph or my experience on the range at Champions and say these are mere coincidences—that if you put a monkey in front of a keyboard, given enough time and random chance, it will produce War and Peace.
However, when someone tried this experiment in 2003, the monkey didn’t type War and Peace; he just smashed the keyboard and defecated on it. He couldn’t even produce a crappy first draft.
So, when I hit the flag on Saturday, I placed my wedge against my bag and took a moment. I thought of God’s immanence and His transcendence. I wondered at the thought of His condescension to me on the practice range at a golf club in Houston, Texas, through a golf shot. And then I couldn’t help but laugh and tell the Lord how much I love Him.
As a result of these supernatural goings-on, I now have two ideas for a devotional—the one I made note of on my phone and the one I’ve written about here.
Then, on Monday at 4:48 p.m. CST, while I was at work, I received a text from Dennis Darville, the Chief Editor of Links Players, asking if I could write an extra devotional for them this month.
I’m sure it was just a coincidence.
Prayer: Lord, help me see your hand in exercising your sovereignty. Amen.