Coincidence?

A good friend of mine is a pilot for American Airlines. He always knew what he wanted to do and he has been a pilot for more than 2 decades.

A few weeks ago he went through his recurrent training. It's an ordeal that all commercial pilots go through every 9 months. The training includes classroom training and a few hours in the simulator. This time, during his simulator flight, the trainer set him up with an engine failure. His task was to get the plane safely "on the ground" with one engine. He said he did well, and passed for another 9 months.

Then it happened. The very next week, on a flight from the west coast, he lost an engine. He told me later that in all his years this has never happened before (good report for American Airlines.) He said he thought about his simulator training and was glad he had already gone through this the week before in practice. He was busy for the next hour. He had to divert to another airport, deal with flying on only one engine, communicate with the passengers who heard all the banging and were quite aware that the engine had stopped. He was busy, but told me it was easy because he had already done it in practice. Obviously, because I'm telling you the story, he got home safely, but he didn't take this "coincidence" lightly.

Coincidence? I don't believe there is such a thing. I know it's easy to spiritualize things that happen in our lives, but there are times when you can clearly see that God has been working. I'm glad my friend was ready for this emergency and I'm sure the 120+ passengers on the plane were glad as well.

So, what do we do with a story like this? For me it's a great application of a verse from Paul, "And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus." For my friend his great need (which he didn't know about yet) was to be prepared for this dilemma in flight and God met that need a week before he knew he would use it. Provision isn't always about money. Often it's about a story like this that we would call coincidence, but God would call his great provision.