“If we believe that God is everywhere, why would we not believe that he is in the smallest of coincidences? A coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”   R. Zacharias

Walking along the street with my daughter and granddog, I reached up for the hundredth time and tucked my hair behind my ear.  Only this time it was with immediate recognition that the gold hoop earring was not there.  Did I just knock it off? Julie began searching the pavement while I checked the hood of my jacket and inside my shirt.  I joined her and for a few minutes we searched the area, so obviously looking for something that a man walking by questioned us about it.  What were we looking for? How big was it?  This would make three times one of those earrings has fallen off and been labeled “LOST”.  Since we had been walking for more than half an hour, over a couple miles of road, I didn’t think there was much point in looking for it at all.  Oddly, I wasn’t terribly upset.  I loved those hoops and in spite of the poor clasp I wore them all the time, so it was my own fault.  This third time was inevitable.

However Julia, was not ready to quit looking.  She verbalized a quick prayer for help and her willingness to plan the search won me over.  We split up, turned on our phone flashlights and started retracing our steps.  The park we walked in was like a maze and it was difficult to remember which side of the road, which direction, which street we had been on.  It was also getting so dark that we could only see a small circle in front of us.  As we finally joined each other and started out of the park, Julie jokingly said “that man will probably come with your earring.”

Actually there was a man approaching us with his flashlight on.  And the first words we heard were “Girls, put your flashlights away.”  He held out my earring and shone his flashlight on it.  “It was very close to where I first saw you.” he told us.  “I figured it must be kind of important, the way you were looking for it.”  I think I hugged him.

As we walked home we began to think of all the coincidences involved in that experience.  Why did I suddenly notice the absence when I didn’t really feel anything, hear anything hitting the ground?  Interesting that I showed the man what it looked like – of several people I encountered he was the only one to ask or know.  He didn’t ask our names or have any contact information for us.  Had we left the park any earlier the chances of us meeting again would have been almost nothing.  We almost did leave earlier and could have taken a different street than we did.  It was pretty miraculous that we encountered him on our way out.  Now you know why I like the definition of coincidence at the beginning of this post.

Today I’m going to check on getting a different clasp on my tricky hoops.  At the same time I’m glad, grateful for the experience of losing a piece of jewelry since by it I had a chance to credit the God who loves me, in small ways.  He is approachable, concerned, all-knowing and nothing is too small to discuss with him.  He is perfect for someone like me who needs a lot of watching over… just sayin.