Ben Milstead

In 1990 I traveled with a singing group from Southern Wesleyan University. We traveled on the weekends during the semester and the entire summer.  Our last concert of the summer was the p.m. service at a church in Maryland just outside of D.C.  We didn’t leave the church until after 11:00 and we were going to drive through the night to get back to South Carolina.  My parents lived in Greensboro, NC at the time so the plan was to drop me off at their house on the way back.

It was sometime around 2:00 a.m. and we were on I-95 in Virginia.  We had stopped for food and to change drivers at 1:30.  I was driving and Roy was in the passenger seat.  Everyone else was sleeping.  We had passed a conversion van several times that was full of people.  The light was on in that van and we could see in it pretty easily.  Roy would waive at a little girl as we would pass.  Then they would pass us again and she would waive.  It was a fun little game to help keep us awake.  As we started up a long incline, our 15 passenger van that was pulling a heavy 16 foot enclosed trailer, couldn’t keep up with the other van.  They went on ahead of us by several minutes.  All of a sudden, as we topped the hill, the other van was on its side in our lane!  I remember that the back tires were still turning.  Fortunately, we saw it in time and were able to stop before hitting the wreckage.  There were no major injuries in the other van and we helped them exit thru the back doors.  We sat with the victims until help came.  I don’t think I even blinked the rest of the way home.

We made it to my parent’s house in Greensboro about the time the sun was coming up.  I walked in the house and into the den where my mother had been sleeping on the couch waiting on us.  I had not seen her all summer and expected a big hug, tears, etc.  Instead, I got this:  “What happened at 2:00?”  I asked her to repeat herself and she did.  I wanted to know why she was asking me that question.  She said, “I woke up at 2:00 thinking that I was having a heart attack because my heart was pounding so hard.  Then I realized that I had just had a dream that you and your group were about to be in a wreck.  I started praying for you right then, that God would protect you on your trip home.”  The next few minutes were extremely emotional and this occurrence is still one that is emotional when recounting.

I don’t believe in coincidences!   I don’t think that anything happens in our life by coincidence.  There are christian leaders I admire and respect that would disagree with me.  That’s fine.  I just don’t believe that anything happens by coincidence.  My life has been full of things that some would call, coincidence, right place at the right time, mother’s intuition, lucky, etc.  You can call it what you want.  I call it God’s perfect timing.

Isn’t it funny how most people will believe that a story like this was a God thing and not a coincidence?   A person stops breathing and there just happens to be someone close by that knows CPR and even the non-believer will say “God was watching out for us.”   But what about the little things?  What about the friend that you run into at the store?  What about the person you are sitting beside in the restaurant,  the gym,  the ballgame?  How about the promotion that you DIDN’T get a work?  Maybe that was a position that you wouldn’t have been happy with but you are going to love the next one that God sends your way. What about the time you were driving through town and every light was green.  That made you happy and you called it luck.  Maybe God called it protection because you missed the wreck that just happened three blocks behind you.

What if you looked at everything today as an opportunity and not a coincidence!  Let’s see God for who He is and give Him credit for all things, not just the convenient ones.