Andy Goodliff – thanks Andy, has drawn attention to a Systematic Theology Conference in Aberdeen, January 2008, on the theme of Providence. I emailed the organiser to say I intended to come (dv)!(Details here), and would he send me booking details in due course.
So. Does God guide our lives? Are coincidences just that, the accidental coming together of circumstances, just one of those things that happen, or does God surprise us and challenge us to look again at how blessing and unlooked for pleasure might be God knocking at the door of lives too busy and self-centred for their own good? Or come at it another way, when someone survives a crisis, sometimes there’s a half-joking but half serious flick of the eyes upward, and the comment, “Someone up there must have been looking after me!”
Our last Austrian holiday was in Mayrhofen, in the Tyrol where it is hard not to think of God, if only because the mountains demand to be looked at, walked on, and thought about. At six thousand feet, looking at ribbons of water, six feet wide, tumbling a hundred feet down a sheer rock face, millions of water drops refracting sunlight and making rainbows against the background of grey rock and green mountain meadow, it’s hard not to ask, so does all this just happen to be here. Is this the intentional beauty of an artist, or just coincidence, nature doing it’s thing?
Then there’s the contrast between hundred ton boulders and tiny symmetrically perfect flowers, in pink, yellow and blue, growing in the sheltering shadow of those same rocks, ages old. Or again, in Alpine sun, climbing towards the Alpenhut where hot soup and a cold drink will both be needed to warm and cool a body working harder than it has for some time, we stop and fill our water bottle at a mini-torrent of crystal clear water, and drink mineral water as nature intended before it got bottled and labelled.
Enjoyment, wonder and admiration for mountain permanence and floral fragility, experiences of the mind and heart which put the routine worries of life in a different more humbling perspective. So is all this extravagant attention to detail an irrelevant by-product of natural forces, or is beauty one of God’s significant nudges to get the attention of minds too preoccupied with achievement, performance, production, results, profit margins, bottom lines and all the other trivialities we have invested with such undeserved significance.
So is all this just coincidence? I learned a long time ago that the word ‘just’ is a devaluing word, best avoided. Are there times when ‘coincidence’ is a significant nudge. 
That same holiday we were on a walk all morning. On the way back along the valley we stopped to talk to John and Julie, a Yorkshire couple and great company. The steam train passed us on its way to Mayrhofen, we waved to the passengers, and walked on to Mayrhofen ourselves. As we walked past the station, there, deep in conversation about the best way to spend an hour in the town before the train left, were Stewart and Helen, two close friends from our time in Aberdeen. I didn’t even know they were on holiday. If we hadn’t met John and Julie… If Stewart didn’t still have the heart of a boy for steam trains… if we had gone up the cable car instead of to our favourite coffee stop. Coincidence? Yes, but not just coincidence. One of God’s more significant nudges, I believe.
I hope, God willing, to learn more of what all this means at the conference in January 2008!
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