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Author and lecturer Vince Vitale and his wife were having lunch a few years ago when they were struck by a strong impression.
Vince would be speaking at a university open forum that evening.
His talk, which concerned the validity of Christianity’s core truths, had been completed a week earlier. So had the accompanying PowerPoint slide deck.
But they both had the impression that the talk needed to tackle one more subject. They made a quick trip home. Vince wrote out, by hand, one extra page of notes, which he stuck into his printed manuscript. Then he added one extra slide.
That evening, the forum was attended by a student from China.
She introduced herself as Alva. That was the English name she had chosen for herself when she came to study in the United States.
One of Viltale’s colleagues, Daniel, welcomed her and said, “That’s an interesting name. What does it mean?”
Alva replied, “It means ‘by grace washed white as snow.'”
Daniel asked if she was a Christian. “No, not at all,” she said. “Do you realize,” Daniel replied, “that your name is basically the heart of the Christian message?” Alva had never heard that. She said that she had chosen her name because she liked the way it sounded.
As the evening unfolded, Vitale rose to make his presentation.
He arrived at the handwritten page that he and his wife had felt led to insert just a few hours earlier. Then he clicked on the new accompanying slide.
It was a quotation from the prophet Isaiah: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18).
Alva looked astonished. Daniel leaned in her direction and said, “That’s your name!” Before the end of the evening, she had begun the process of rethinking her entire life in light of the God whose grace changes everything.
Vitale writes, “The more I talk with people, the more convinced I am that the experience of miracles is universal. I like asking people, even the most scientific of people, ‘Have you ever had an experience that made you think there might be a God?’
“Usually there is an awkward lull, and then some nervous laughter, but, if you wait long enough, almost without fail the person will say, ‘Well, there was this one time when…'”
Most of us are reticent to share such stories. We wonder if we’re the only one. We wonder if others will think we’ve spent a bit too much time in the sun.
But with God, there are no coincidences.
His timing is miraculously perfect.
For Alva, for me, and for you.