{"id":5719,"date":"2026-09-08T08:24:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T12:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5719"},"modified":"2026-09-08T08:24:24","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T12:24:24","slug":"coincidences-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/08\/coincidences-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Coincidences"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast<\/em>,\u00a0click here<\/a>
\u00a0

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.\u00a0So had the accompanying PowerPoint slide deck.

But they both had the impression that the talk needed to tackle one more subject.\u00a0They made a quick trip home.\u00a0Vince wrote out, by hand, one extra page of notes, which he stuck into his printed manuscript.\u00a0Then he added one extra slide.\u00a0\u00a0

That evening, the forum was attended by a student from China.\u00a0

She introduced herself as Alva.\u00a0That was the English name she had chosen for herself when she came to study in the United States.\u00a0\u00a0

One of Viltale’s colleagues, Daniel, welcomed her and said, “That’s an interesting name.\u00a0What does it mean?”\u00a0\u00a0

Alva replied, “It means ‘by grace washed white as snow.'”\u00a0

Daniel asked if she was a Christian.\u00a0“No, not at all,” she said.\u00a0“Do you realize,” Daniel replied, “that your name is basically the heart of the Christian message?”\u00a0Alva had never heard that.\u00a0She said that she had chosen her name because she liked the way it sounded.

As the evening unfolded, Vitale rose to make his presentation.\u00a0\u00a0

He arrived at the handwritten page that he and his wife had felt led to insert just a few hours earlier.\u00a0Then he clicked on the new accompanying slide.

It was a quotation from the prophet Isaiah:\u00a0“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18).

Alva looked astonished.\u00a0Daniel leaned in her direction and said, “That’s your name!”\u00a0Before the end of the evening, she had begun the process of rethinking her entire life in light of the God whose grace changes everything.\u00a0\u00a0

Vitale writes, “The more I talk with people, the more convinced I am that the experience of miracles is universal.\u00a0I 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.\u00a0We wonder if we’re the only one.\u00a0We 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.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here\u00a0 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.\u00a0So had… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5720,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[101,11],"class_list":["post-5719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-grace","tag-miracles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5721,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5719\/revisions\/5721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}