As I entered the airport security line coming home from Pittsburgh, the TSA agent tapped on a handheld device and, after reading the display, directed me to a special aisle. I glanced at the product name on the device as I passed – it was labeled “TSA Randomizer”. For some reason, TSA has started to randomly select passengers to varying levels of inspections and this device was apparently the means by which they assured a fair and equitable distribution. The lucky travelers in this line were making quiet sophomoric observations about this procedure, provoking the individual in front of me to turn around and affirm my snide contribution. Amazingly, this young adult in front of me had been one of several teenaged kids at our church where we used to live, with whom I regularly met to help develop their respective musical interests – fifteen years prior. He stuck with it, grew his faith, earned a music degree and is now the music director on staff with his church. We only had time to hug and exchange contact information, but it was an amazing 90-second encounter that touched me deeply.

Through personal experience, I am convinced God proactively reassures us through language, events, and modalities that we understand and cannot ignore. These ‘Godwink’ moments – happenings and timing – are so statistically improbable that they simply cannot be a result of randomness or coincidence. And they always catch my attention. The mathematician in me reflexively begins estimating the odds – breaking down the components and multiplying their individual, statistical likelihood percentages together to yield the overall probability. The chances of each of us both being in the same distant city multiplied by the chance we were in the airport at the same time multiplied by the chance the TSA Randomizer placed us next to each other multiplied by all the other smaller contributing factors is a vanishingly small probability.

This has happened to all of us. That out-of-the blue contact from a friend at a time of real need. The page that falls open to a perfectly-timed scriptural passage. The confluence of seemingly unrelated events that delivered a solution ahead of a problem.

Whether we see each other again for fifteen years is not the point. The staggering improbability of the connection and the warm remembered history it educed was the most uplifting and encouraging part of my day. I think there may be a constant flow of reassurances, most of which we don’t pause to consider and therefore miss. Touches and encouragements that God orchestrates through the relationships and natural events in our lives, which remind us that we’re on track, and that He’s there in all things – big and small. It could be that there are no coincidences.